Essential Drinks of mixology (a dismal list)

Great and important topic - thanks Martin!
Don’t you think it would be useful to mention the source for each drink also ?
With a way/code to precise if the recipe dated is for :

the complete recipe (name and ingredients)
the recipe but not the final name yet (so source of the complete recipe)
first mention of the name
another case ?

I agree some documentation would help, and I’ll start adding some.

That said, I didn’t set out with this particular list to try to nail down attributions or “firsts”—I was more looking at this from the broader cultural level

I understand for the cultural level, but with time, if we can end with a reference page, it would be useful to many

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I think we’re gradually working our way towards that on various fronts.

I’ve completed my first pass of attributions and citations.

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I added a few things. I don’t have the original 1935 Smirnoff bottle-hanger with the Vodka Martini, but I do have this ad from the Chicago Tribune, March 15th, that is apparently based on it:

You can see the hanger in the picture. So close yet so far away.

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Edited the Sidecar to reflect Robert Vermeire’s contribution. His book was published in the spring of 1922, MacElhone’s came towards Christmas. Hope that’s fine with everybody.

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Any other Europeans or European drinks I’ve maybe given short shrift?

I might add the “Combinacion” of Madrid, the Rose (Paris) and the Ohio (Berlin).

I’ll leave the Combinacion to François, but for the others:

Rose (Giovanni “Johnny” Mitta, Chatham bar, Paris, ca. 1910; https://www.thedailybeast.com/you-should-be-mixing-up-the-rose-cocktail-this-spring

The Ohio is tough because there’s a French version that is early but completely outside the mainstream tradition of what the cocktail was. Maybe Robert has a better idea–I recall he wrote something on this recently–but the last time I dug into it, for the Whisky Advocate, I couldn’t find a creator for it; the best early source I could find is Schoenfeld & Leybold, 1913. The drink was certainly current in Germany through the 1960s.

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Thank you for the ongoing additions and corrections—I’ve updated the list accordingly.

@francois, how do you feel about adding the Media Combinación to the list? Makes sense? Is there any identifiable provenance?

Aperol Spritz: I don’t have any great sources—mainly Wikipedia—but it seems the Aperol variant of the Spritz Veneziano has been kicking around (regional specialty) since the 1950s.

If so, that currently leaves the Appletini of the mid-90s as the most recent “essential” drink on the list. That seems a little sad and unfair, but maybe them’s the breaks? Just to be sure, what about Tommy’s Margarita, Gold Rush, Gin Gin Mule, Old Cuban, Chartreuse Swizzle, Penicillin, Oaxaca Old Fashioned, Paper Plane, Benton’s Old Fashioned, Gin Basil Smash or the Barrel Aged Negroni? They’ve certainly traveled. Perhaps it’s just too early to name any drinks from the last twenty years as essential?

A post was split to a new topic: Combinación

While working on a little something having to do with this list, I realized I have misplaced my copy of @Splificator’s “Punch” (the entry in “Imbibe!” points the reader back to that other inimitable volume). After a few minutes’ frustrated searching I decided to say to hell with it and purchase a Kindle version as a back up in the case that I am not able to locate my beloved, much marked hard copy. All this preamble to say that @Splificator’s author photograph on the Amazon website is…well it’s just a thing of beauty. I want that bucket hat.

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I wish I still had it!

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Added the Grasshopper after sifting through the OCS. Almost added the Amaretto Sour and Bellini, but thought better. Still considering the Fog Cutter and Painkiller, since they traveled so widely for so long.

I think the Scorpion Bowl should go on this list as a true Hawaiian original and precursor to Tiki. Trader Vic’s version is ballpark-close to the original, albeit without the unobtainable okolehao.

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Here’s Jane Howard’s recipe from her “Waikiki Promenade” column in the Honolulu Advertiser, August 6, 1938:

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I agree 100%. Love the clipping. Do we have any sense when the native Scorpion came to be? Is it specifically a creature of that post-Prohibition, pre-WW2 okolehau boom (i.e., “the 1930s”)?

It seems to be a 1930s drink, popular in the mixed Anglo-Hawaiian sporting fraternity that was unique to Honolulu; I can find no trace of it before 1937, anyway. I doubt they often used the legal oke, though–there was a great deal of illicit stuff made, some of it quite good, and those were the people to know about that. The legal stuff was mostly marketed to tourists.

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A version of this Essential Drinks list is now an exhibit on the Cocktail Kingdom Library site. I’m still adding recipes, but we’ve got a good start. Like the discussion, here, it’s a “living document” that we’ll continue to update.

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