Monster in a Glass

Most accounts say the Negroni is based on the Americano, with Campari as the featured ingredient in all of its bitter, bright red glory. The Negroni is what happens when the Americano gets more American, and by that I mean dumping the soda and adding more booze. Unfortunately, gaps in the timeline and sparse written evidence make it difficult to have a nice clean evolutionary trail from the Americano to the Negroni. We have the invention of Campari in 1860 and the appearance of the Americano in the late 19th and early 20th century, originally with just bitters not necessarily Campari. There is also the supposed creation of the Negroni in 1919 and the notable omission of Negroni recipes until the 1950s, when dare we say, James Bond might have had a hand in popularizing it? Factor in cocktails with identical ingredients and different names appearing in recipe books in the 1920s and 1930s and you have yourself a nice little fruit punch colored puzzle. That doesn’t even include the conflicting claims of inventing the cocktail!

A number of parties want credit for creating the Negroni, and since they all have the last name Negroni this should be easy to pull apart, right? Was it Count Pascal Olivier de Negroni presenting a cheap wedding gift to his new bride in Senegal? Was it created by the Negroni Antica Distilleria? Or is it a product of a wealthy Italian Count? This tends to be the favored origin story. Following his stint playing cowboy, riding horses and gambling in the American West, Count Camillo Negroni returned to Italy. Wanting a bit more kick to his Americano cocktail, he told the bartender to spice it up with some gin and the Negroni was born. Sounds simple and believable, but did he really create it or just popularize the drink of a Florentine barman named Fosco? Either way, we might be looking at a bartender doing what they do best, adding more alcohol to drinks and making them taste good.

In addition to unraveling the origin story of the Negroni and the life of a cowboy count, we explore the attempts to spread democracy throughout Europe after the successful American Revolution and Giuseppe Garibaldi and his role in the unification of Italy. Like many Europeans, 19th century Italians looked to America for a better, fleeing from war, famine, poverty, and volcanic eruptions. We also dive into the Italian influence in the American West and a possible connection to Spaghetti westerns.

So grab a Fosco, and join us for our discussion of the Negroni and the Americano.

The Americano ingredients were as follows:

Cocktails are all about crafting, sipping, and enjoying the experience. To many, creating a cocktail is equivalent to cooking a fine meal. Raw ingredients carefully mixed to generate a taste that is to be savored, to be discussed for the nuances of the flavors and the way the ingredients play off one another.

And then we have the Long Island Iced Tea! This monster of a drink features all the booze with about 1 ounce each of five different liquors, and just 2 ounces of those pesky non-alcoholic ingredients.

The kicker is that it unexpectedly tastes good, which is probably why drinking Long Island Iced Teas will quickly turn you into a rabid werewolf. I repeat, WEREWOLF!

Like a number of the cocktails we have covered, this one also has some disputed origins. Was it created by bartender Robert Butt in the 1970s? Did it appear in the 1960s in cookbooks? Or was this a creation that goes all the way back to the days of prohibition?

Join us as we discuss this “frat party in a glass” as one newspaper article called it. We explore the origins of this beast, how it might have got its name, the notorious Oak Beach Inn and owner Bob Matheson, and some alleged creative drinking in 1920s Tennessee.

The ingredients are as follows:

The Moscow Mule shows up in very few cocktail books for something that seems to be one of the most popular cocktails ever. This one was exciting because got some new ingredients to talk about with Vodka and Ginger Beer. Vodka as an ingredient has not shown up in many episodes, mostly due to how little the liquor was used in cocktails up to the 1950s. Supposedly, the Moscow Mule turned this around and made vodka popular. Not so fast, we have some thoughts about how true this is.

A first for us, the origins of this drink are disputed and overlap at the same time. It really comes down to who you want to believe. Was it the three rich guys getting drunk in the Hotel Chatham? Or was it the bartender trying to clear out a basement full of ginger beer and vodka? We try to figure it out and have some theories about how this may have been an advertising ploy right from the start.

We couldn’t talk about a drink from the 1940s named the Moscow Mule without diving into the Cold War and the House Un-American Committee, or how it managed to survive in this environment. The Moscow Mule ends up being part of the Hollywood story during this period of the Red Scare, and you can’t have Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s without the HUAC.

This episode has a little bit of everything, including a call from science friend to give us his take on whether copper cups actually make this drink colder, or if there are some physics messing with your mind, man. Also, lizards and mules coming out of ginger bottles. That’s right, I said lizards and mules.

Moscow Mules are always crowd pleasers despite (or maybe because of) the gimmick. We all enjoyed the mules however Ward 8 made up a real good one with a dash of Angostura to really bring out the ginger.

The Old-Fashioned Cocktail is probably one of the most famous cocktails ever, so you are almost not a cocktail bar nowadays if you don’t have some version on your menu. Researching the Old-Fashioned was a daunting idea at first, if for no other reason than being called something as non-descript as old fashioned. We can assume that it is probably referring to something very old, and in this case it turned out to be the true, original cocktail. The first, the prime, the archetype, the Elder cocktail. The one that allows purists to define what is, and what is not a cocktail.

Most commonly made with bourbon or rye, it was originally made with a non-specific liquor, and could have included gin, brandy, or whiskey. It can be argued though that the bitters, sugar, and water really help to characterize this drink as the cocktail, and not the liquor in it. A 200 year old recipe is bound to change and then be standardized at some point, right? While we looked for a point in the evolution when bourbon and rye became the dominant component, and orange peels the norm, it continued to vary throughout its long existence. Even today, what is considered a basic Old-Fashioned doesn’t necessarily match the earliest recipes and changes from bartender to bartender.

Like many of the most famous cocktails, we also thought this would have contested origins, with everyone crawling out of the woodwork wanting the ownership. Aside from someone claiming the first bourbon recipe, there isn’t anyone really stepping forward. Then again, how do you claim something over 100 years old by time you get a hold of it? George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks (1895) seems to have the earliest recipe in a book with the name Old-Fashioned, but the name appears in newspapers in the preceding decade. The name truly was a product of the 19th century cocktail era, with more bartenders, more creativity, and more cocktails than ever before. Being known as simply “cocktail” prior to that was fine, but as you get into the 1860s you have to call it something specific to differentiate it from all of your other cocktails. It probably wasn’t exciting at the time, it was basic, it was what the old men drank, it was dare I say, old-fashioned.

This episode runs the gamut of old-fashionedness including discussions about infections, milk cocktails, George Washington “treating” for votes, the 1893 World’s Fair, and H.H. Holmes murdering 11,000 visiting bartenders! Note to all the parents letting their kids listen, we say the word cock in this episode a whole lot. Probably more than necessary. We also learn what a fundament is, and the reasons people put ginger in them. Yep, old-fashioned times were pretty gross it turns out. But hey, cocktails!

I learned a lot this episode. With this mixed drink I learned more about Cuba, Coca-Cola, the Spanish American War and the Cuban Revolution and I learned that the standard rum and Coke originally had a different name. [caption id="attachment_906" align="alignright" width="300"] Cuban Revolutionaries in Tampa.[/caption] The Cuba Libre is essentially a rum and Coke with lime juice added. I had no idea that this combination existed as a named cocktail previously. The tumultuous tale of how Cuba acquired its freedom...or almost acquired its freedom...must be told to get to the traditional story explaining the origins of the Cuba Libre. At the end of the Spanish American War in 1899 (we go into much more depth in the show) the United States was left with several new maritime colonies to manage including Cuba. It was this standing presence of U.S. soldiers on the island that made it possible for U.S. serviceman Captain Charles Russel to make a toast in a Havana bar "Por Cuba libre!" [caption id="attachment_908" align="alignleft" width="211"] Jose Marti, Father of Cuban Independence[/caption] We 0ften regard heroic stories like this with a degree of skepticism. Unfortunately, there is usually very little we can do to verify their truth other than checking the circumstances. The circumstantial evidence itself is sound. There was, indeed, a Captain Russel who fought in the war and was stationed in Cuba and Coca-Cola was available in Cuba at the time. There is nothing in the story that is outwardly false and to some extent the verified unnecessary specifics suggest more value towards it being a genuine story. Another interesting aspect of this cocktail is how the story about it kept growing after its inception. As American interests soured relations with the Cubans, the cocktail's name became somewhat of a bitter pill so that now throughout the Caribbean the drink is known as La Mentirita which means "the little lie."  Also, with the rise of Communism on Cuba, the focus for the drink has shifted and now the drink is used in toasts by Cuban dissidents in America as a political statement against Castro. Once again we see cocktails shifting to fit the culture that values them. The drink is made thusly:

The lime juice does make it more than a rum and coke, but we all agree it doesn't make it incredibly better. Now, in my travels, I learned from another fellow that in South America they routinely add cinnamon to their Cuba Libres, so we tried that version as well. I have to admit after having the cinnamon added (traditionally they either sprinkle it on top or used a cinnamon stick to mix it) I don't want to drink rum and cokes without adding cinnamon ever again. It changes it up so dramatically that it makes the beverage a whole new monster.