"cocktail history" news and stories

References to Champagne drinks abound in old newspapers, novels and cocktail books. Champagne drinks containing brandy and orange liqueurs in the forms of punches and cups can be found in old cookbook recipe collections such as Mrs. Beeton's "Book of Household Management," first published in 1861.

I've seen mentions of Champagne cocktails in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle archives as far back as 1869, the same year Mark Twain mentions the drink in "Innocents Abroad." The first recipe citation for a Champagne cocktail goes back the "The Bar-Tenders Guide" written by Jerry Thomas in 1862.

Champagne during this time was generally much sweeter than today's popular dry style labeled "Brut," which didn't exist on a label until around 1876. Thomas' 1862 book calls for shaking the ingredients, including the sparkling wine, which was surely a mistake since shaking carbonated drinks can get explosive.

Barbara Holland is one of my favorite writers. She has a way of taking culture and history and creating little book gems such as Wasn't The Grass Greener? and Endangered Pleasures. Her autobiography When All The World Was Young is quite good too. It's always great to see her come out with a new book. This one is called The Joy of Drinking.

Holland has touched on the subject of drinking over the years in a couple of the above books, but this one really gets into the history of drinking, explaining how people came to drink certain types of alcohol, how drinks were invented, even the laws that have governed drinking over the years. It's a rather small book, but she gets a lot of information in the pages: Mark Anthony, Pope Leo, the Prohibition, what our founding fathers drank, right up to today, talking about what our drinking habits are like now.