I was trying to do some research on the popular cocktails of World War I… I know about ALLIES which is a great cocktail in the martini realm that Garret J. Richard introduced me to with Ray San at Slowly Shirley just before the pandemic. However, when I searched online the results were cocktails like Sidecar and French 75 which did not appear until after World War I like the 1920s. I know by the time cocktails actually catch on and are documented it might be years later, but I was curious if there was a way in the COCKTAILS app to search specifically by year (I tried) and/or if anyone knows a resource specifically for WWI cocktails that were popular at that time?
Popular among whom, exactly?
Just in general. I know the Espressotini & Cosmopolitan and other vodka cocktails were en vogue in the 1990s. So is there a reliable resource for WWI cocktails?
Unfortunately it doesn’t come with a drinks list but I thought I’d post this beautiful photo of the American Bar of the French Air Force Escadrille F7 in 1917.
6 Likes
Where’s the Pappy? Just kidding! Other than Cinzano I can’t really make out any of the other labels, and surely they have changed and have now been updated by the branding & PR departments, thanks for sharing, love it!
Loving the big bottle of Fockink genever in the middle. Cocktails de genièvre hollandais améliorés pour tous!
2 Likes
That’s almost certainly a bottle of Grand Marnier on the far left. Got to love consistent packaging!
2 Likes
I’d say:
Probably Grand Marnier (…) a couple of cognac bottles (…) Negrita rum (…) peppermint liqueur (…) Fockink genever, Sandeman’s port, Cinzano (…), Martini. The last one is not Benedictine but might be some sort of herbal liqueur.
That’s a pretty good selection. Whoever put it together knew what he was doing. The pilots buzz was probably much better than the guy’s in the trenches.
The association of WWI air force and fine drinking ran deep. Here are a couple of screenshots from Jean Renoir’s 1937 masterpiece, ´La grande illusion´.
Alcohol kills! Alcohol makes you crazy! The Squadron leader drinks!
Note the shaker on Stroheim’s shelves.
6 Likes
Hi JRCX - Our beloved David Wondrich did a massive presentation on War time drinking/cocktails at Tales quite a few years ago. I was there and it was one of the best presentations I’ve been to in all the years travelling to NOLA. I’d hit him up on X and see if he still has the slides? Worth a stab! JC
They’re not specifically World War I drinks, but the fascinating 1913 book “Lexicon der Getranke” features twenty-five straight pages of German regiment drinks beginning on page 177. There are around 435 of them in total.
Here’s the first page:
The rest are along the same lines.
I know nothing about the military culture, but it seemed obligatory that each have a (quasi)unique drink. It would be delightful to know more about how they came to be compiled.
2 Likes
Many of the regiments had large-bore punches to go with these drinks, which are essentially shooters; the 1905 (?) Bowlen und Punsche fur den Feld- un Manover-gebrauch der Deutschen Armee (Bowls and Punches for the Use of the German Army in the Field and on Manoeuvres) collects many of them, plus some American cocktails pinched from Harry Johnson.
Mr. Crawley is, as always, very kind, but his memory is perhaps colored by the numerous libations Jeff and I served at that seminar: it was exclusively about World War Twice (as Robert Ruark used to call it).
I agree with François about the pilots; here’s how Dean Kotz and I imagined them in our forthcoming Comic Book History of the Cocktail:
There have yet to be written the comprehensive histories of drinking in either of the World Wars; that is a shame, as the global scale of those wars would make such books supremely interesting.
5 Likes
@Splificator, have you read L’ivresse du soldat : l’alcool dans les tranchées : 1914-1918 by Charles Ridel? I found it fascinating although cocktails don’t make an appearance.
3 Likes
I picked it up in Paris a few months ago but haven’t had a chance to more than glance through it. Over the years I’ve read numerous memoirs and diaries of life in the trenches, though, mostly English but also French, Italian, American, German and Austrian (I use to teach a course on literature of the World Wars). Drinking features heavily in some–e.g., https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-booziest-book-i-read-this-year/--but it’s rarely mixed drinking, and its purpose is rarely convivial. It’s not partying, it’s surviving. That said, there were a few popular cocktails–the Tipperary, Angelo of the New York Bar in Paris’s calvados-based “75” Cocktail (not to be confused with the American French 75), a handful of others. It would be useful to pull them together.
3 Likes
On the other hand, when in late 1917 the Italians took a chunk of the carso, the rocky, cave-infested territory north of Trieste from the Austrians, they found all kinds of Austrian dugouts in the dolinas; the hollows of earth interspersed among the rock outcroppings, including this one:
I’d love to see a drinks list. Ohio cocktail, anyone?
3 Likes
Fixed that for you. Seems that it’s later, now.
1 Like
Thanks–and yeah, it does at that.