World Cocktail Week Starts Today!
In honor of world cocktail week 2010; I’m going to try to distill (pun intended) the history of the drink into seven posts. Because this will be brief at best, and because I make no effort to hide my plagiarism, for anyone who wants more info I highly recommend “Imbibe” by David Wondrich.
One supposes that I would start with the inventor of the cocktail, but trying to figure that out is like trying to figure out who decided to drink water first. Cocktails by today’s definition have been around as long as distilled beverages; since they consist of mixing any distilled beverage with something else. As early as 1880 there was scholarly, albeit inconclusive, research about the invention of the cocktail. Therefore, from a purely organizational standpoint, I offer the following incomplete time line:
-Wine Punch: wine being the earliest of spirits and made by every know civilization mixed with something
-Punch: wine gives way to other stronger spirits as the base for punch
-Collins, Fizz, Sour: the punch bowl behind the bar gives way to the single drink mixed on the bar
-Slings, Juleps, Toddies: Enter Sugar
-Cocktails: Enter Bitters
The word cocktail starts to appear in print at the very beginning of the 1800s; one can assume it had been around for a decent time before that. In the beginning and for awhile it is used to refer to drinks with Spirit, Sugar & Bitters; all though that is no longer really the definition I’ll leave it at that for today.
Plain Cocktail:
Jerry Thomas 1862
-3 or 4 dashes Simple Syrup
-2 Dashes Bitters
-1 Wine Glass (2 oz.) Spirits
-2 Dashes Curacoa
Squeeze Lemon Peel in a glass; fill 1/3 with ice and stir.