2.There have been many theories about the origin of the word “cocktail.” As of today, it has been narrowed down to two. One comes from a 1700s word in the horse trade profession, and the other from a fictional character based on a real person, but neither has been confirmed.
3.To date, the first printed form of the word “cocktail” appeared in 1798. The word pertaining to the drink was first printed in 1803 and the first printed definition was in 1806.
4.The first known British drink receipt (recipe) book was published in 1827. The first known American cocktail recipe book was published in 1862.
5.As far as we know, the Mint Julep is America’s first cocktail.
6.Before the 1920s, in America, fancy cocktails were drunk by prominent white males in fancy saloons and bars. The average joe drank beer, wine, whiskey, and cider at pubs, while a fancy bar might have a side room for fancy women called the “Ladies’ Bar.” The only women allowed in the main bar were madams and prostitutes.
7.The first golden age of the cocktail was between 1860 and 1919, and the seed for the second golden age of the cocktail was planted around the millennium.
8.The Martini is the most iconic cocktail and symbol of the cocktail culture.
9.The repeal of the American Prohibition, women’s freedom to socialize in most bars, and Hollywood technology (talkies) glamorized cocktails between the 1930s and 1960s.
10.The world’s largest cocktail festival, Tales of the Cocktail, has been held in New Orleans each July since 2002.
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A Cocktail Timeline
1500s
If you owned a pub, alehouse, tavern, or inn, you were probably growing your own food for meals and drink to serve guests. In addition to having land for a garden, you needed to tend to animals, provide stables for travelers (we call them parking lots today), have an area to produce alcoholic drink, and be literate enough to keep books, pay bills, manage help, and collect payments. Tavern floors were often made of sand, and it was common to have a portcullis (metal vertical closing gate) around the bar area. To multitask dinner, a kitchen dog was often placed in a turnspit wheel—the dog would walk inside the wheel, which slowly turned meat roasting over a fire.
Names of alehouses, pubs, taverns, and inns included Beverley Arms, Black Lion, Boar’s Head, Bull Long Medford, Crown Sarre, King’s Head, the Crane Inn, the Devil’s Tavern, the George, the Lion, the Prospect of Whitby, the White Horse, and Ye Olde Mitre.
Drinking words heard were “aled up,” “befuddled,” “bizzled,” “drinking deep,” “has on a barley cap,” “has more than one can hold,” “lion drunk,” “malt above the meal,” “rowdy,” “swallowed a tavern token,” “shattered,” “shaved,” “swilled up,” “wassailed,” and “whittled.”
New brands and spirits created in the 1500s included aguardiente de caña (rum), brandy, cachaça, Disarrono, jenever, kummel, mezcal, pisco, and Scotch whiskey.
1500 − Sugarcane is harvested in Hispaniola to be used to make rum.
−Scotland’s King James IV grants the production of aqua vitae.
1514 − King Louis XII of France licenses vinegar producers to distill eau-de-vie.
1518 − Spanish ruler Charles V imports 2,000 slaves to Hispaniola to work the sugarcane fields.
1525 − Amaretto Disaronno is produced in Italy.
−A groundbreaking distilling book is published and inspires Holland to produce brandewijn (burnt wine).
1531 − Spanish settlers distill the local fermented drink in Mexico to make mexcalli (mezcal).
1533 − Sugarcane eau-de-vie is created (later known as cachaça).
−Monks in the Italian mountains make liqueurs.
1534 − A book with over seventy vodka-based medicines is published. It is the first time the word “vodka” is documented.
1537 − King Francis I of France grants the production of eau-de-vie.
1538 − Peruvian farmers make what we know today as pisco.
1552 − In the book Constelijck Distilleer Boek, Philippus Hermanni refers to a juniper-infused eau-de-vie in his 1568.
1575 − Lucas Bols sets up a distillery in Amsterdam and begins making jenever.
1586 − Aguardiente de caña (basically, rum), hierba buena (Cuban herbal plant that belongs to the mint family), limes, and sugar were batched for a ship of sick sailors and its British sea captain, Sir Francis Drake (nicknamed El Draque—Spanish for “the dragon”). All that was needed was an addition of fizzy water and they’d have had themselves a barrel of Mojitos.
1600s
We have a good idea of what taverns and pubs looked like because Dutch painter Jan Steen painted detailed daily life paintings. His paintings related to drinking include Prince’s Day in a Tavern (1660; he painted himself in the painting), Tavern Garden (1660), In the Tavern (1660), The Drinker (1660), A Merry Party (1660), Peasants Before an Inn (1653), Leaving the Tavern (unknown date), Merry Company on a Terrace (1670), and Tavern Scene (1670). Things seen in Steen’s paintings are jugs, bottles, vessels (some made of glass), sheet music, musical instruments, flirting, fire, food, laughter, games, gambling, animals, children, toys, messes, men grabbing women, smoking, skulls, barrels, and birds in cages. Minus the children and animals, this is pretty much what is seen in modern bars. My personal favorite painting is titled As the Old Sing, so Pipe the Young (1668).
In the early 1600s, punch (paunch, a Hindu word that means “five”) became popular among English sailors and spice merchants who would travel to India and back. While sailing homeward, they would make big bowls of punch with five ingredients, including spirit, lemon, sugar, water, and spice. Punch spread to Britain’s upper class, and it was soon taken to the New World (America). The upper class owned bowls, cups, and ladles made of silver, and records in London’s Central Criminal Court documented many incidents of these items being stolen—most times with the punch still in the bowl!
As for Pilgrims who sought a new life in the New World, life was hard carving out an uncharted land while depending on English ships for supplies. For the most part, settlers were in survival mode, but somehow they found the time and resources to open not one but two rum distilleries. Rum is what funded early America.
Some names of alehouses, pubs, taverns, and inns included Bear at Bridge-foot, Bull and Bush, Bull and Gate, Grapes, Green Dragon Tavern, Hatchet Inn, the Anchor, the Plough, the Red Lion, the Seven Stars, Three Nuns, and Trafalgar Tavern.
Drinking words heard in the 1600s included “admiral of the narrow seas,” “beastly drunk,” “boozed,” “bubbled cap-sick,” “caught a fox,” “D and D” (drunk and disorderly), “dull in the eye,” “elevated,” “giggled up,” “got bread and cheese in one’s head,” “muddled up,” “on a continual drinking merry-go-round,” “on the rampage,” and “seeing double.”
New brands and spirits in the 1600s include Bushmills Irish whiskey, Chartreuse, and Haig Scotch.
Prince’s Day in a Tavern, by Jan Steen, 1660, Dutch painting, oil on panel. Prince’s Day was a birthday celebration in honor of Prince William III of Orange-Nassau (November 14, 1660). © Everett Art / Shutterstock
1608 − Old Bushmills Distillery is established in Ireland. Today it holds the title of the first licensed whiskey distillery in the world.
1620 − The Pilgrims bring brandy and gin with them on the Mayflower to the New World on