[EDIT - I found the coasters after another search quite easily so more interested in the handkerchiefs…]
I’ve just stumbled across a reference for the Black Russian stating that part of the reason it became globally known was due to Gus Tops handing out silk handkerchiefs with his profile and favourite recipes on it to some of the well liked guests:
I appreciate the coasters from Raffles are likely super late additions to really claim the drink and not “original” from early days of the sling, but I have two questions I’m hoping to get help with here:
A) Does anyone have any evidence of the silk handkerchiefs from Gustave Tops?
B) Are there any other “Classics” that have been aided in popularity by the active sharing of the recipe on physical barware such as napkins, coasters, handkerchiefs?
I’ve been looking for one of those handkerchiefs for at least a decade, without catching so much as a whiff of one. The Hallelujah Cocktail is a good call for another one, as is the Saturn Cocktail, which was completely forgotten when Jeff Berry copied the recipe for it and the name of its creator off of a glass he examined in a thrift store but didn’t buy.
I have a different version of the coaster; this is Roberto Pregarz’s version of the drink–the Singapore Disco Sling, as it were–from around 1970.
Is it possible that nobody grasps the true hilarity of the “Hallelujah” recipe? Aimee Semple McPherson was a wildly successful evangelical preacher/phenom in the US and beyond, starting in the 1920s—sort of the protrotype for the televangelists of 50 years later. Her enormous church building in LA (the Angelus Temple) still stands— a proto-megachurch! She vanished for some months— lots of speculation about that (she called it a kidnapping; a love-nest, face-lift etc were also suggested), but she apparently spent a while in Panama on a cruise during that time— hence the recipe above.
There’s loads of commentary on her all over the web still— and most of it from people who are still fans, and don’t strike me as especially credible (including a lot of her Wikipedia article!). It’s worth checking out some of the YouTube links, but I thought this nice little clip was the best by a mile, considering the cocktail topic!
I just pulled this out of a drawer. don’t know if it counts as barware, although if a handkerchief does I guess it would have to. Early 1950s, as far as I can tell. It’s more clever than useful, but it is pretty damn clever.
I love this. Do you know if it was meant for bartenders or customers? As you note, it’s quite clever and would probably have been fairly useful behind the stick, especially pre-internet/cell phone. Even today, a Bartender’s Slide Rule would probably be a useful tool for new bartenders. Or was it tended to be provided to customers?
This is super cool, but you’re right this isn’t drink specific or “barware” as such. I’d put it in the box with “fancy menus” alongside some of the interesting ones from places like Callooh Callay in London or Trick Dog in San Francisco.
I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere recently though… Do you know if it’s been digitised and posted online?
Fantastic! I think I need to make one of these, just for fun. Is it plastic, or paper? M60 in the lower corner might be a publication date.
Interesting design choices. It initially seems poorly organized. Normally you would think that STIR and SHAKE (or the 3 vermouths) would be grouped together, but I can imagine the potential mis-read if someone doesn’t pay close attention, or there is any vertical slop in the sleeve and insert. That leads me to believe that it was actually meant to be used and not only as a souvenir. Also, maybe this is a newer version. Several design decisions just feel to me like a revision, hence the M60.
As for those 3 vermouths, would that perhaps make the FRE. VERMOUTH a bianco?
Any chance of getting those recipes? Fly Wheel? Elevator?
Hmmm— one coaster calls for orange juice in the recipe and the other doesn’t? Interesting that actual proportions are added to one version (“drops” of DOM and Cointreau? “Topped with a little secret?” Who knew?)
True, it’s not barware, but neither is Gus Tops’ handkerchief, but both are certainly the kinds of sources to which cocktail history has given short shrift. There are good reasons for that–there’s just so much ephemera, and there are no central repositories of it; no EUVS for handkerchiefs and slide rules and cocktail trays and pamphlets, booklets, brochures, postcards, flyers, neck-hangers, back labels and on and on and on. Menus, for Christ’s sake. There are online menu collections, but none that I know of focused on drinks lists.
I’ve got boxes of this sort of stuff and I know others with far more than I have, and collectively I think we’ve barely scratched the surface.
Anyway. I didn’t mean to imply that this little slide rule was in any way unique or pioneering. I just thought it was kinda cool.
As for its date, although the M60 conjecture is reasonable, I’d put it earlier, if only because of the “prize winning cocktails”: there are four from the 1952 World Cocktail Competition, two from the 1951 European competition and one from the 1950 World one. If this were any later than 1953, I’d expect drinks such as J. Ashworth’s Roberta May, from the 1954 World Competition, A.M. Jordan’s First Night, from the 1956 World Competition (there doesn’t seem to have been a 1955 one) and so forth.
I got this along with a UKBG bartender’s business card, which I have misplaced (that’s one of the problems with collecting this stuff: how the hell do you organize it?). I suspect it was a B to B (bartender-to-bartender) thing to promote the Guild.
