Whether it's Carrie from Sex and the City or the advertising executives in Mad Men, people are drinking more cocktails than ever before.
In this episode, we take a look at the fascinating stories behind six popular cocktails, from the Bloody Mary to the White Russian.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about The Unusual Names of Cocktails.
[00:00:27] Now, you might be the sort of person who thinks of themselves as something of a cocktail connoisseur, able to make the perfect Negroni or Tom Collins without a second thought.
[00:00:38] Or you might never have drunk a drop of alcohol in your life.
[00:00:42] Whatever side of the cocktail love/hate spectrum you would place yourself, it’s hard to deny that the history of cocktails is fascinating.
[00:00:51] These drinks often come with amazing backstories, and in this episode we are going to explore the history of cocktails overall, and dive into the stories of some of the most interesting, from the Margarita right through to the Singapore Sling.
[00:01:08] Along the way we’ll meet Ice Kings, zealous queens, and more.
[00:01:12] OK then, let’s get right into it.
[00:01:18] If you look up the word “cocktail” in a dictionary, you’ll find something like “an alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice or cream.”
[00:01:31] This term, “cocktail”, was first recorded in 1798, but the concept of a cocktail, or at least of adding tasty things to alcohol, has existed for millennia.
[00:01:44] For better or worse, humans practically since the dawn of time have enjoyed the feeling that comes from drinking alcohol.
[00:01:52] Alcohol, after all, is a drug, it does change the way you feel.
[00:01:57] And while the effects of alcohol are considered pleasant by many, the taste of alcohol itself is not so universally enjoyed.
[00:02:07] So, going back thousands of years, people have looked for ways to make the process of drinking alcohol more pleasant.
[00:02:15] Going back to the ancient Greeks, there are records of honey and spices being added to wine.
[00:02:21] All over the world, people would add all sorts of things to their wine and beer to try to make the taste more palatable, to camouflage the taste of the alcohol in the drink.
[00:02:34] With the discovery of spices and more widespread availability of sugar, this all started to go into wine and beer, which, let’s remember, were often drunk pretty much constantly in large parts of Europe as safer alternatives to water.
[00:02:50] When distillation started to become more widespread, when the technique of producing spirits, stronger alcohol, reached Europe, clearly there was an even greater need to disguise the taste of this stronger alcohol.
[00:03:05] And while the US is probably the country most associated with cocktails, the first “cocktail” is widely believed to be something called “punch”, which is thought to have been created by a British soldier in India.
[00:03:21] You might know a “punch” now as a big bowl of alcohol with various fruit juices, and back in the 17th century, when the first record of punch can be found, it met this modern criteria.
[00:03:34] It was, and I’m quoting directly, "a kind of drink consisting of aqua vitae, rose-water, juice of citrons and sugar." It was a cocktail.
[00:03:46] Now, punch has its own fascinating history, but we must move on.
[00:03:51] And to continue our exploration of the unusual names of cocktails, we must cross the Atlantic to the United States, the country that is now synonymous with cocktail drinking.
[00:04:03] And before we get into the stories of the cocktails themselves, I must introduce you to a peculiar character, a man by the name of Fredric Tudor.
[00:04:15] He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1783, and by his death, in 1864 he would have pioneered the transport and sale of ice all over the world, earning himself the nickname of “the Ice King”.
[00:04:31] From a young age, he was convinced that there was a fortune to be made in transporting ice from the ponds of New England, in the northeast of the United States, to the rest of the country, to warmer areas without ice.
[00:04:46] He decided not to go to Harvard, and instead, he focussed on what must have seemed like a mad dream, transporting ice in the days before widespread artificial refrigeration.
[00:04:59] He cut huge blocks of ice out of frozen ponds, loaded them up on large ships, and tried everything he could to stop the ice melting before it arrived at ports to the south of the country, and even in the Caribbean.
[00:05:15] Covering the ice in wood shavings was one idea, building a sort of roof over it was another.
[00:05:23] Eventually, after multiple iterations, improving the insulation and buying faster ships, he was able to transport 180 tonnes of ice all the way to Calcutta, in India. His ice empire was born, and he became one of the richest men in America in the process.
[00:05:44] Now, bringing this back to cocktails, why was he important, why do we need to know the story of the Ice King?
[00:05:51] Well, because cocktails need ice. Practically every modern cocktail comes with some form of ice, and cocktails are much more palatable when drunk cold.
[00:06:04] So, you could say, there could be no cocktails without the Ice King.
[00:06:10] But there were a couple of other important innovations we need to mention that made widespread cocktail drinking possible.
[00:06:17] Firstly, artificial carbonation, making drinks fizzy. This happened in 1767, by a man called Jacob Schweppe, yes, that is where “Schweppes” comes from.
[00:06:30] And secondly, in 1826, something called “continuous distillation”, which was essentially the process to make producing spirits, strong alcohol, much more efficient.
[00:06:42] So, by the mid-19th century, the US had all of the ingredients required for a cocktail boom: ice, fizzy drinks, strong alcohol, and a heavy drinking culture, a very thirsty population.
[00:06:58] So thirsty, in fact, that it would lead to the 1919 Volstead Act, and Prohibition, the 13-year period at the start of the 20th century when practically all alcohol was banned in the United States.
[00:07:11] By the way, if you haven’t listened to our episode on Prohibition yet, that’s number 261.
[00:07:17] Now, back to cocktails. Ever since the end of Prohibition, in 1933, cocktails have been on an upwards trajectory, they have gone from strength to strength.
[00:07:29] Whether it was James Bond’s signature “vodka martini, shaken not stirred”, or the “mad men” of the New York advertising world’s constant thirst for Old Fashioned, or the more recent trend of Instagrammable colourful drinks like Negronis or Aperol Spritz, it might seem like we are drinking more cocktails than ever before,
[00:07:50] And some of them have fascinating origin stories, stories I should add that are often debated, there are multiple versions of them, but they’re interesting nonetheless.
[00:08:03] So, without further ado, our first cocktail is the most popular cocktail in the world, the Margarita.
[00:08:10] In case you need a reminder of what a margarita is, it’s a mix of tequila, triple sec, and lemon juice, and is often served with salt around the rim of the glass.
[00:08:22] Like most cocktails, there are several claims about who invented the margarita.
[00:08:29] One claim is that it was invented by accident by a Mexican bartender who was trying to make a Mexican drink consisting of brandy, triple sec, and lemon juice.
[00:08:40] He reached for the brandy bottle, but instead of brandy he picked up a bottle of tequila, and lo and behold, he accidentally invented the margarita.
[00:08:52] Another claim is that there was a fussy customer, a dancer called Marjorie King, who said she was allergic to all spirits except tequila, and the owner of a Tijuana restaurant invented this twist on the “ tequila shot” specifically for her, an alternative, longer drink, compared to a simple shot.
[00:09:13] There’s also another theory that the “margarita” is actually only a twist, a variant, on an older cocktail called “The Daisy”, which was popular during prohibition.
[00:09:26] The Daisy has exactly the same ingredients, except it uses brandy rather than tequila.
[00:09:33] And as the Spanish speakers among you may know, or if you speak another Romance language you can probably guess, the word for daisy in Spanish is….Margarita.
[00:09:45] Our second cocktail is also going to be a woman’s name, but this time it’s something slightly less pleasant, or at least has a less pleasant story: the Bloody Mary.
[00:09:57] Again, if you need a reminder about how to make a Bloody Mary, it’s tomato juice with vodka, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco, and it’s often drunk on aeroplanes or even the morning after a heavy night of drinking.
[00:10:13] It’s an unusual concoction, certainly, so where did it come from?
[00:10:19] Well, it’s thought to have been invented by a French bartender in 1921, a man called Fernand Petiot, who worked at the famous Harry’s Bar in Paris, a bar where the famously thirsty writer Ernest Hemingway could often be found.
[00:10:35] There are several other claims, but the more interesting question is about why it’s called a “Bloody Mary”.
[00:10:43] The most popular theory is that it was named after Mary I of England, a particularly bloodthirsty queen who was known for burning Protestants at the stake.
[00:10:55] It’s not the only theory, of course. There is another theory that it was named after an actress, Mary Pickford, as well as a mere waitress at a Chicago bar.
[00:11:05] And a completely different theory about where it comes from is that it can all be traced back to a mispronunciation of “Vladimir”.
[00:11:15] This might sound unlikely, but it is somewhat more plausible when you learn that one of the people the French bartender made the drink for was Vladimir Smirnov, of the Smirnov vodka dynasty.
[00:11:30] So, perhaps the bartender simply couldn't say Vladimir properly, he said something like “loody mir”, and the drink became “Bloody Mary”.
[00:11:41] Now, we must stay, in fact, at Harry’s Bar in Paris for our third cocktail, the “Sidecar”.
[00:11:49] A sidecar cocktail, if you don’t know, is cognac, triple sec and lemon juice. If you imagine an old motorbike and you picture a little compartment with one wheel on the side, with enough space for a person to sit in, that’s a sidecar.
[00:12:06] And the cocktail is thought to be named after the motorbike attachment.
[00:12:12] This origin story goes back to the end of World War I, where there was an American army captain who would reportedly drive all the way up to the bar in the sidecar of the motorbike and request this drink.
[00:12:26] Other theories have it being invented in London as well as across the Atlantic in New Orleans, but I certainly like the idea of this American captain riding all the way up to the bar.
[00:12:39] Now for cocktail number four, we are going to go all the way to the other side of the world, to Singapore, for the Singapore Sling.
[00:12:48] As a reminder, this drink has a gin base, and is topped up with a mixture of fruit juices and liquors to give a bright pink colour, more like a large glass of fruit juice than anything stronger.
[00:13:02] And when it comes to cocktails with debated origins, where there are multiple different claims about who invented it and where, the Singapore Sling is pretty universally agreed to have been invented sometime around 1915 by a man called Ngiam Tong Boon who was working at the famous Raffles hotel in Singapore.
[00:13:26] Ngiam, the bartender, created this drink to solve a very specific problem, he created it with a specific customer in mind: women.
[00:13:38] See, at the start of the 20th century, Singapore was still a British colony. Men would come to the bar at Raffles hotel to meet and drink. Women would come too, but it still wasn’t considered socially acceptable for women to be seen drinking alcohol in public.
[00:13:57] Ngiam’s clever idea was, well, I imagine these women want to drink alcohol, they just don’t want other people to think that they’re drinking alcohol. What if I create a drink that doesn’t look alcoholic, it looks like a fruit juice, so these women can happily drink it without the social stigma of being seen to drink in public.
[00:14:18] And, ta-da, he was right. It was a massive success, and you can now find this cocktail being made in bars all over the world.
[00:14:28] Right, we have time for two more cocktails.
[00:14:32] Cocktail number six is one with unusual ingredients, and an unusual story of why it became so popular.
[00:14:40] It’s the White Russian.
[00:14:42] Now, again if you need a reminder of what a White Russian is, the clue about the main ingredient is in the name. It’s a cream-based cocktail, with vodka, cream and coffee liquor.
[00:14:55] The origin story of the White Russian is not so interesting, it’s thought to have been invented, along with its sister cocktail, the Black Russian, by a Belgian barman at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels.
[00:15:08] And, if you were hoping that it was called a White Russian because of some deep historical reference to the White Army, or the Russian Civil War, I’m sorry to disappoint.
[00:15:19] The only reason it's called “Russian”, is because it uses vodka, and it’s actually far more popular outside of Russia than within it.
[00:15:28] But the interesting thing about the White Russian is that its popularity comes almost exclusively from a film, the 1998 cult film “The Big Lebowski”.
[00:15:41] If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know why. The main character in the film, played by Jeff Bridges, constantly drinks this cocktail, downing a total of 9 White Russians during the movie.
[00:15:54] It was quite a niche drink before, but after the movie developed a cult following, this drink became something of a staple, and sales of one of the main ingredients, Kahlua, boomed.
[00:16:08] And for our final cocktail it’s time for perhaps the simplest cocktail of them all, a cocktail so simple you might rightly argue that it isn’t a cocktail at all: The Screwdriver.
[00:16:21] The ingredients of a Screwdriver are blissfully simple: orange juice and vodka.
[00:16:28] Like the Singapore Sling, it has the advantage of not looking like it contains alcohol. Vodka is colourless, and so the drink is indistinguishable from orange juice.
[00:16:40] And this cocktail has some wonderful claims as to its origins, all of which revolve around the fact that it’s a cocktail that can be drunk without people knowing it contains alcohol.
[00:16:53] My favourite one is that it comes from the mid 20th century, from American oil workers in the middle east.
[00:17:00] As an American oil worker working in the middle of the desert, before widespread TV, there were limited ways to pass the time, you had limited access to interesting alcoholic ingredients, and more importantly, you weren’t meant to be drinking when operating heavy equipment.
[00:17:18] Perhaps someone might have brought in a bottle of vodka from a recent trip, and there might have been concentrated orange juice provided in your base.
[00:17:28] So, what did these American oil workers do? They poured the vodka in with the orange juice. But this wasn’t Harry’s Bar in Paris with skilled bartenders and all the necessary equipment. So, what did they use to stir the vodka into the orange juice?
[00:17:45] A screwdriver of course!
[00:17:48] There’s another theory that dates it slightly earlier, back to World War II, to American soldiers who would add vodka to their orange juice, which clearly you are not meant to do if your job involves handling deadly weapons.
[00:18:02] And they would find themselves mixing it all together with the closest thing they had to hand: well, you’ve guessed it, a screwdriver.
[00:18:11] OK then, that is it for today's episode on a brief history of cocktail drinking and some of the potential origins or at least claimed places of origin of six of the most popular.
[00:18:24] For almost every cocktail it seems like there are half a dozen different origin stories, so they are all to be taken with a pinch of salt.
[00:18:32] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:36] What is your favourite cocktail, and why?
[00:18:39] What are some other interesting origin stories?
[00:18:42] There are loads more fun ones, and unfortunately we didn’t have time to talk about Negronis, Gin and Tonics, or the ridiculously strong “Zombie”.
[00:18:50] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:54] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about The Unusual Names of Cocktails.
[00:00:27] Now, you might be the sort of person who thinks of themselves as something of a cocktail connoisseur, able to make the perfect Negroni or Tom Collins without a second thought.
[00:00:38] Or you might never have drunk a drop of alcohol in your life.
[00:00:42] Whatever side of the cocktail love/hate spectrum you would place yourself, it’s hard to deny that the history of cocktails is fascinating.
[00:00:51] These drinks often come with amazing backstories, and in this episode we are going to explore the history of cocktails overall, and dive into the stories of some of the most interesting, from the Margarita right through to the Singapore Sling.
[00:01:08] Along the way we’ll meet Ice Kings, zealous queens, and more.
[00:01:12] OK then, let’s get right into it.
[00:01:18] If you look up the word “cocktail” in a dictionary, you’ll find something like “an alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice or cream.”
[00:01:31] This term, “cocktail”, was first recorded in 1798, but the concept of a cocktail, or at least of adding tasty things to alcohol, has existed for millennia.
[00:01:44] For better or worse, humans practically since the dawn of time have enjoyed the feeling that comes from drinking alcohol.
[00:01:52] Alcohol, after all, is a drug, it does change the way you feel.
[00:01:57] And while the effects of alcohol are considered pleasant by many, the taste of alcohol itself is not so universally enjoyed.
[00:02:07] So, going back thousands of years, people have looked for ways to make the process of drinking alcohol more pleasant.
[00:02:15] Going back to the ancient Greeks, there are records of honey and spices being added to wine.
[00:02:21] All over the world, people would add all sorts of things to their wine and beer to try to make the taste more palatable, to camouflage the taste of the alcohol in the drink.
[00:02:34] With the discovery of spices and more widespread availability of sugar, this all started to go into wine and beer, which, let’s remember, were often drunk pretty much constantly in large parts of Europe as safer alternatives to water.
[00:02:50] When distillation started to become more widespread, when the technique of producing spirits, stronger alcohol, reached Europe, clearly there was an even greater need to disguise the taste of this stronger alcohol.
[00:03:05] And while the US is probably the country most associated with cocktails, the first “cocktail” is widely believed to be something called “punch”, which is thought to have been created by a British soldier in India.
[00:03:21] You might know a “punch” now as a big bowl of alcohol with various fruit juices, and back in the 17th century, when the first record of punch can be found, it met this modern criteria.
[00:03:34] It was, and I’m quoting directly, "a kind of drink consisting of aqua vitae, rose-water, juice of citrons and sugar." It was a cocktail.
[00:03:46] Now, punch has its own fascinating history, but we must move on.
[00:03:51] And to continue our exploration of the unusual names of cocktails, we must cross the Atlantic to the United States, the country that is now synonymous with cocktail drinking.
[00:04:03] And before we get into the stories of the cocktails themselves, I must introduce you to a peculiar character, a man by the name of Fredric Tudor.
[00:04:15] He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1783, and by his death, in 1864 he would have pioneered the transport and sale of ice all over the world, earning himself the nickname of “the Ice King”.
[00:04:31] From a young age, he was convinced that there was a fortune to be made in transporting ice from the ponds of New England, in the northeast of the United States, to the rest of the country, to warmer areas without ice.
[00:04:46] He decided not to go to Harvard, and instead, he focussed on what must have seemed like a mad dream, transporting ice in the days before widespread artificial refrigeration.
[00:04:59] He cut huge blocks of ice out of frozen ponds, loaded them up on large ships, and tried everything he could to stop the ice melting before it arrived at ports to the south of the country, and even in the Caribbean.
[00:05:15] Covering the ice in wood shavings was one idea, building a sort of roof over it was another.
[00:05:23] Eventually, after multiple iterations, improving the insulation and buying faster ships, he was able to transport 180 tonnes of ice all the way to Calcutta, in India. His ice empire was born, and he became one of the richest men in America in the process.
[00:05:44] Now, bringing this back to cocktails, why was he important, why do we need to know the story of the Ice King?
[00:05:51] Well, because cocktails need ice. Practically every modern cocktail comes with some form of ice, and cocktails are much more palatable when drunk cold.
[00:06:04] So, you could say, there could be no cocktails without the Ice King.
[00:06:10] But there were a couple of other important innovations we need to mention that made widespread cocktail drinking possible.
[00:06:17] Firstly, artificial carbonation, making drinks fizzy. This happened in 1767, by a man called Jacob Schweppe, yes, that is where “Schweppes” comes from.
[00:06:30] And secondly, in 1826, something called “continuous distillation”, which was essentially the process to make producing spirits, strong alcohol, much more efficient.
[00:06:42] So, by the mid-19th century, the US had all of the ingredients required for a cocktail boom: ice, fizzy drinks, strong alcohol, and a heavy drinking culture, a very thirsty population.
[00:06:58] So thirsty, in fact, that it would lead to the 1919 Volstead Act, and Prohibition, the 13-year period at the start of the 20th century when practically all alcohol was banned in the United States.
[00:07:11] By the way, if you haven’t listened to our episode on Prohibition yet, that’s number 261.
[00:07:17] Now, back to cocktails. Ever since the end of Prohibition, in 1933, cocktails have been on an upwards trajectory, they have gone from strength to strength.
[00:07:29] Whether it was James Bond’s signature “vodka martini, shaken not stirred”, or the “mad men” of the New York advertising world’s constant thirst for Old Fashioned, or the more recent trend of Instagrammable colourful drinks like Negronis or Aperol Spritz, it might seem like we are drinking more cocktails than ever before,
[00:07:50] And some of them have fascinating origin stories, stories I should add that are often debated, there are multiple versions of them, but they’re interesting nonetheless.
[00:08:03] So, without further ado, our first cocktail is the most popular cocktail in the world, the Margarita.
[00:08:10] In case you need a reminder of what a margarita is, it’s a mix of tequila, triple sec, and lemon juice, and is often served with salt around the rim of the glass.
[00:08:22] Like most cocktails, there are several claims about who invented the margarita.
[00:08:29] One claim is that it was invented by accident by a Mexican bartender who was trying to make a Mexican drink consisting of brandy, triple sec, and lemon juice.
[00:08:40] He reached for the brandy bottle, but instead of brandy he picked up a bottle of tequila, and lo and behold, he accidentally invented the margarita.
[00:08:52] Another claim is that there was a fussy customer, a dancer called Marjorie King, who said she was allergic to all spirits except tequila, and the owner of a Tijuana restaurant invented this twist on the “ tequila shot” specifically for her, an alternative, longer drink, compared to a simple shot.
[00:09:13] There’s also another theory that the “margarita” is actually only a twist, a variant, on an older cocktail called “The Daisy”, which was popular during prohibition.
[00:09:26] The Daisy has exactly the same ingredients, except it uses brandy rather than tequila.
[00:09:33] And as the Spanish speakers among you may know, or if you speak another Romance language you can probably guess, the word for daisy in Spanish is….Margarita.
[00:09:45] Our second cocktail is also going to be a woman’s name, but this time it’s something slightly less pleasant, or at least has a less pleasant story: the Bloody Mary.
[00:09:57] Again, if you need a reminder about how to make a Bloody Mary, it’s tomato juice with vodka, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco, and it’s often drunk on aeroplanes or even the morning after a heavy night of drinking.
[00:10:13] It’s an unusual concoction, certainly, so where did it come from?
[00:10:19] Well, it’s thought to have been invented by a French bartender in 1921, a man called Fernand Petiot, who worked at the famous Harry’s Bar in Paris, a bar where the famously thirsty writer Ernest Hemingway could often be found.
[00:10:35] There are several other claims, but the more interesting question is about why it’s called a “Bloody Mary”.
[00:10:43] The most popular theory is that it was named after Mary I of England, a particularly bloodthirsty queen who was known for burning Protestants at the stake.
[00:10:55] It’s not the only theory, of course. There is another theory that it was named after an actress, Mary Pickford, as well as a mere waitress at a Chicago bar.
[00:11:05] And a completely different theory about where it comes from is that it can all be traced back to a mispronunciation of “Vladimir”.
[00:11:15] This might sound unlikely, but it is somewhat more plausible when you learn that one of the people the French bartender made the drink for was Vladimir Smirnov, of the Smirnov vodka dynasty.
[00:11:30] So, perhaps the bartender simply couldn't say Vladimir properly, he said something like “loody mir”, and the drink became “Bloody Mary”.
[00:11:41] Now, we must stay, in fact, at Harry’s Bar in Paris for our third cocktail, the “Sidecar”.
[00:11:49] A sidecar cocktail, if you don’t know, is cognac, triple sec and lemon juice. If you imagine an old motorbike and you picture a little compartment with one wheel on the side, with enough space for a person to sit in, that’s a sidecar.
[00:12:06] And the cocktail is thought to be named after the motorbike attachment.
[00:12:12] This origin story goes back to the end of World War I, where there was an American army captain who would reportedly drive all the way up to the bar in the sidecar of the motorbike and request this drink.
[00:12:26] Other theories have it being invented in London as well as across the Atlantic in New Orleans, but I certainly like the idea of this American captain riding all the way up to the bar.
[00:12:39] Now for cocktail number four, we are going to go all the way to the other side of the world, to Singapore, for the Singapore Sling.
[00:12:48] As a reminder, this drink has a gin base, and is topped up with a mixture of fruit juices and liquors to give a bright pink colour, more like a large glass of fruit juice than anything stronger.
[00:13:02] And when it comes to cocktails with debated origins, where there are multiple different claims about who invented it and where, the Singapore Sling is pretty universally agreed to have been invented sometime around 1915 by a man called Ngiam Tong Boon who was working at the famous Raffles hotel in Singapore.
[00:13:26] Ngiam, the bartender, created this drink to solve a very specific problem, he created it with a specific customer in mind: women.
[00:13:38] See, at the start of the 20th century, Singapore was still a British colony. Men would come to the bar at Raffles hotel to meet and drink. Women would come too, but it still wasn’t considered socially acceptable for women to be seen drinking alcohol in public.
[00:13:57] Ngiam’s clever idea was, well, I imagine these women want to drink alcohol, they just don’t want other people to think that they’re drinking alcohol. What if I create a drink that doesn’t look alcoholic, it looks like a fruit juice, so these women can happily drink it without the social stigma of being seen to drink in public.
[00:14:18] And, ta-da, he was right. It was a massive success, and you can now find this cocktail being made in bars all over the world.
[00:14:28] Right, we have time for two more cocktails.
[00:14:32] Cocktail number six is one with unusual ingredients, and an unusual story of why it became so popular.
[00:14:40] It’s the White Russian.
[00:14:42] Now, again if you need a reminder of what a White Russian is, the clue about the main ingredient is in the name. It’s a cream-based cocktail, with vodka, cream and coffee liquor.
[00:14:55] The origin story of the White Russian is not so interesting, it’s thought to have been invented, along with its sister cocktail, the Black Russian, by a Belgian barman at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels.
[00:15:08] And, if you were hoping that it was called a White Russian because of some deep historical reference to the White Army, or the Russian Civil War, I’m sorry to disappoint.
[00:15:19] The only reason it's called “Russian”, is because it uses vodka, and it’s actually far more popular outside of Russia than within it.
[00:15:28] But the interesting thing about the White Russian is that its popularity comes almost exclusively from a film, the 1998 cult film “The Big Lebowski”.
[00:15:41] If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know why. The main character in the film, played by Jeff Bridges, constantly drinks this cocktail, downing a total of 9 White Russians during the movie.
[00:15:54] It was quite a niche drink before, but after the movie developed a cult following, this drink became something of a staple, and sales of one of the main ingredients, Kahlua, boomed.
[00:16:08] And for our final cocktail it’s time for perhaps the simplest cocktail of them all, a cocktail so simple you might rightly argue that it isn’t a cocktail at all: The Screwdriver.
[00:16:21] The ingredients of a Screwdriver are blissfully simple: orange juice and vodka.
[00:16:28] Like the Singapore Sling, it has the advantage of not looking like it contains alcohol. Vodka is colourless, and so the drink is indistinguishable from orange juice.
[00:16:40] And this cocktail has some wonderful claims as to its origins, all of which revolve around the fact that it’s a cocktail that can be drunk without people knowing it contains alcohol.
[00:16:53] My favourite one is that it comes from the mid 20th century, from American oil workers in the middle east.
[00:17:00] As an American oil worker working in the middle of the desert, before widespread TV, there were limited ways to pass the time, you had limited access to interesting alcoholic ingredients, and more importantly, you weren’t meant to be drinking when operating heavy equipment.
[00:17:18] Perhaps someone might have brought in a bottle of vodka from a recent trip, and there might have been concentrated orange juice provided in your base.
[00:17:28] So, what did these American oil workers do? They poured the vodka in with the orange juice. But this wasn’t Harry’s Bar in Paris with skilled bartenders and all the necessary equipment. So, what did they use to stir the vodka into the orange juice?
[00:17:45] A screwdriver of course!
[00:17:48] There’s another theory that dates it slightly earlier, back to World War II, to American soldiers who would add vodka to their orange juice, which clearly you are not meant to do if your job involves handling deadly weapons.
[00:18:02] And they would find themselves mixing it all together with the closest thing they had to hand: well, you’ve guessed it, a screwdriver.
[00:18:11] OK then, that is it for today's episode on a brief history of cocktail drinking and some of the potential origins or at least claimed places of origin of six of the most popular.
[00:18:24] For almost every cocktail it seems like there are half a dozen different origin stories, so they are all to be taken with a pinch of salt.
[00:18:32] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:36] What is your favourite cocktail, and why?
[00:18:39] What are some other interesting origin stories?
[00:18:42] There are loads more fun ones, and unfortunately we didn’t have time to talk about Negronis, Gin and Tonics, or the ridiculously strong “Zombie”.
[00:18:50] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:54] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about The Unusual Names of Cocktails.
[00:00:27] Now, you might be the sort of person who thinks of themselves as something of a cocktail connoisseur, able to make the perfect Negroni or Tom Collins without a second thought.
[00:00:38] Or you might never have drunk a drop of alcohol in your life.
[00:00:42] Whatever side of the cocktail love/hate spectrum you would place yourself, it’s hard to deny that the history of cocktails is fascinating.
[00:00:51] These drinks often come with amazing backstories, and in this episode we are going to explore the history of cocktails overall, and dive into the stories of some of the most interesting, from the Margarita right through to the Singapore Sling.
[00:01:08] Along the way we’ll meet Ice Kings, zealous queens, and more.
[00:01:12] OK then, let’s get right into it.
[00:01:18] If you look up the word “cocktail” in a dictionary, you’ll find something like “an alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice or cream.”
[00:01:31] This term, “cocktail”, was first recorded in 1798, but the concept of a cocktail, or at least of adding tasty things to alcohol, has existed for millennia.
[00:01:44] For better or worse, humans practically since the dawn of time have enjoyed the feeling that comes from drinking alcohol.
[00:01:52] Alcohol, after all, is a drug, it does change the way you feel.
[00:01:57] And while the effects of alcohol are considered pleasant by many, the taste of alcohol itself is not so universally enjoyed.
[00:02:07] So, going back thousands of years, people have looked for ways to make the process of drinking alcohol more pleasant.
[00:02:15] Going back to the ancient Greeks, there are records of honey and spices being added to wine.
[00:02:21] All over the world, people would add all sorts of things to their wine and beer to try to make the taste more palatable, to camouflage the taste of the alcohol in the drink.
[00:02:34] With the discovery of spices and more widespread availability of sugar, this all started to go into wine and beer, which, let’s remember, were often drunk pretty much constantly in large parts of Europe as safer alternatives to water.
[00:02:50] When distillation started to become more widespread, when the technique of producing spirits, stronger alcohol, reached Europe, clearly there was an even greater need to disguise the taste of this stronger alcohol.
[00:03:05] And while the US is probably the country most associated with cocktails, the first “cocktail” is widely believed to be something called “punch”, which is thought to have been created by a British soldier in India.
[00:03:21] You might know a “punch” now as a big bowl of alcohol with various fruit juices, and back in the 17th century, when the first record of punch can be found, it met this modern criteria.
[00:03:34] It was, and I’m quoting directly, "a kind of drink consisting of aqua vitae, rose-water, juice of citrons and sugar." It was a cocktail.
[00:03:46] Now, punch has its own fascinating history, but we must move on.
[00:03:51] And to continue our exploration of the unusual names of cocktails, we must cross the Atlantic to the United States, the country that is now synonymous with cocktail drinking.
[00:04:03] And before we get into the stories of the cocktails themselves, I must introduce you to a peculiar character, a man by the name of Fredric Tudor.
[00:04:15] He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1783, and by his death, in 1864 he would have pioneered the transport and sale of ice all over the world, earning himself the nickname of “the Ice King”.
[00:04:31] From a young age, he was convinced that there was a fortune to be made in transporting ice from the ponds of New England, in the northeast of the United States, to the rest of the country, to warmer areas without ice.
[00:04:46] He decided not to go to Harvard, and instead, he focussed on what must have seemed like a mad dream, transporting ice in the days before widespread artificial refrigeration.
[00:04:59] He cut huge blocks of ice out of frozen ponds, loaded them up on large ships, and tried everything he could to stop the ice melting before it arrived at ports to the south of the country, and even in the Caribbean.
[00:05:15] Covering the ice in wood shavings was one idea, building a sort of roof over it was another.
[00:05:23] Eventually, after multiple iterations, improving the insulation and buying faster ships, he was able to transport 180 tonnes of ice all the way to Calcutta, in India. His ice empire was born, and he became one of the richest men in America in the process.
[00:05:44] Now, bringing this back to cocktails, why was he important, why do we need to know the story of the Ice King?
[00:05:51] Well, because cocktails need ice. Practically every modern cocktail comes with some form of ice, and cocktails are much more palatable when drunk cold.
[00:06:04] So, you could say, there could be no cocktails without the Ice King.
[00:06:10] But there were a couple of other important innovations we need to mention that made widespread cocktail drinking possible.
[00:06:17] Firstly, artificial carbonation, making drinks fizzy. This happened in 1767, by a man called Jacob Schweppe, yes, that is where “Schweppes” comes from.
[00:06:30] And secondly, in 1826, something called “continuous distillation”, which was essentially the process to make producing spirits, strong alcohol, much more efficient.
[00:06:42] So, by the mid-19th century, the US had all of the ingredients required for a cocktail boom: ice, fizzy drinks, strong alcohol, and a heavy drinking culture, a very thirsty population.
[00:06:58] So thirsty, in fact, that it would lead to the 1919 Volstead Act, and Prohibition, the 13-year period at the start of the 20th century when practically all alcohol was banned in the United States.
[00:07:11] By the way, if you haven’t listened to our episode on Prohibition yet, that’s number 261.
[00:07:17] Now, back to cocktails. Ever since the end of Prohibition, in 1933, cocktails have been on an upwards trajectory, they have gone from strength to strength.
[00:07:29] Whether it was James Bond’s signature “vodka martini, shaken not stirred”, or the “mad men” of the New York advertising world’s constant thirst for Old Fashioned, or the more recent trend of Instagrammable colourful drinks like Negronis or Aperol Spritz, it might seem like we are drinking more cocktails than ever before,
[00:07:50] And some of them have fascinating origin stories, stories I should add that are often debated, there are multiple versions of them, but they’re interesting nonetheless.
[00:08:03] So, without further ado, our first cocktail is the most popular cocktail in the world, the Margarita.
[00:08:10] In case you need a reminder of what a margarita is, it’s a mix of tequila, triple sec, and lemon juice, and is often served with salt around the rim of the glass.
[00:08:22] Like most cocktails, there are several claims about who invented the margarita.
[00:08:29] One claim is that it was invented by accident by a Mexican bartender who was trying to make a Mexican drink consisting of brandy, triple sec, and lemon juice.
[00:08:40] He reached for the brandy bottle, but instead of brandy he picked up a bottle of tequila, and lo and behold, he accidentally invented the margarita.
[00:08:52] Another claim is that there was a fussy customer, a dancer called Marjorie King, who said she was allergic to all spirits except tequila, and the owner of a Tijuana restaurant invented this twist on the “ tequila shot” specifically for her, an alternative, longer drink, compared to a simple shot.
[00:09:13] There’s also another theory that the “margarita” is actually only a twist, a variant, on an older cocktail called “The Daisy”, which was popular during prohibition.
[00:09:26] The Daisy has exactly the same ingredients, except it uses brandy rather than tequila.
[00:09:33] And as the Spanish speakers among you may know, or if you speak another Romance language you can probably guess, the word for daisy in Spanish is….Margarita.
[00:09:45] Our second cocktail is also going to be a woman’s name, but this time it’s something slightly less pleasant, or at least has a less pleasant story: the Bloody Mary.
[00:09:57] Again, if you need a reminder about how to make a Bloody Mary, it’s tomato juice with vodka, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco, and it’s often drunk on aeroplanes or even the morning after a heavy night of drinking.
[00:10:13] It’s an unusual concoction, certainly, so where did it come from?
[00:10:19] Well, it’s thought to have been invented by a French bartender in 1921, a man called Fernand Petiot, who worked at the famous Harry’s Bar in Paris, a bar where the famously thirsty writer Ernest Hemingway could often be found.
[00:10:35] There are several other claims, but the more interesting question is about why it’s called a “Bloody Mary”.
[00:10:43] The most popular theory is that it was named after Mary I of England, a particularly bloodthirsty queen who was known for burning Protestants at the stake.
[00:10:55] It’s not the only theory, of course. There is another theory that it was named after an actress, Mary Pickford, as well as a mere waitress at a Chicago bar.
[00:11:05] And a completely different theory about where it comes from is that it can all be traced back to a mispronunciation of “Vladimir”.
[00:11:15] This might sound unlikely, but it is somewhat more plausible when you learn that one of the people the French bartender made the drink for was Vladimir Smirnov, of the Smirnov vodka dynasty.
[00:11:30] So, perhaps the bartender simply couldn't say Vladimir properly, he said something like “loody mir”, and the drink became “Bloody Mary”.
[00:11:41] Now, we must stay, in fact, at Harry’s Bar in Paris for our third cocktail, the “Sidecar”.
[00:11:49] A sidecar cocktail, if you don’t know, is cognac, triple sec and lemon juice. If you imagine an old motorbike and you picture a little compartment with one wheel on the side, with enough space for a person to sit in, that’s a sidecar.
[00:12:06] And the cocktail is thought to be named after the motorbike attachment.
[00:12:12] This origin story goes back to the end of World War I, where there was an American army captain who would reportedly drive all the way up to the bar in the sidecar of the motorbike and request this drink.
[00:12:26] Other theories have it being invented in London as well as across the Atlantic in New Orleans, but I certainly like the idea of this American captain riding all the way up to the bar.
[00:12:39] Now for cocktail number four, we are going to go all the way to the other side of the world, to Singapore, for the Singapore Sling.
[00:12:48] As a reminder, this drink has a gin base, and is topped up with a mixture of fruit juices and liquors to give a bright pink colour, more like a large glass of fruit juice than anything stronger.
[00:13:02] And when it comes to cocktails with debated origins, where there are multiple different claims about who invented it and where, the Singapore Sling is pretty universally agreed to have been invented sometime around 1915 by a man called Ngiam Tong Boon who was working at the famous Raffles hotel in Singapore.
[00:13:26] Ngiam, the bartender, created this drink to solve a very specific problem, he created it with a specific customer in mind: women.
[00:13:38] See, at the start of the 20th century, Singapore was still a British colony. Men would come to the bar at Raffles hotel to meet and drink. Women would come too, but it still wasn’t considered socially acceptable for women to be seen drinking alcohol in public.
[00:13:57] Ngiam’s clever idea was, well, I imagine these women want to drink alcohol, they just don’t want other people to think that they’re drinking alcohol. What if I create a drink that doesn’t look alcoholic, it looks like a fruit juice, so these women can happily drink it without the social stigma of being seen to drink in public.
[00:14:18] And, ta-da, he was right. It was a massive success, and you can now find this cocktail being made in bars all over the world.
[00:14:28] Right, we have time for two more cocktails.
[00:14:32] Cocktail number six is one with unusual ingredients, and an unusual story of why it became so popular.
[00:14:40] It’s the White Russian.
[00:14:42] Now, again if you need a reminder of what a White Russian is, the clue about the main ingredient is in the name. It’s a cream-based cocktail, with vodka, cream and coffee liquor.
[00:14:55] The origin story of the White Russian is not so interesting, it’s thought to have been invented, along with its sister cocktail, the Black Russian, by a Belgian barman at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels.
[00:15:08] And, if you were hoping that it was called a White Russian because of some deep historical reference to the White Army, or the Russian Civil War, I’m sorry to disappoint.
[00:15:19] The only reason it's called “Russian”, is because it uses vodka, and it’s actually far more popular outside of Russia than within it.
[00:15:28] But the interesting thing about the White Russian is that its popularity comes almost exclusively from a film, the 1998 cult film “The Big Lebowski”.
[00:15:41] If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know why. The main character in the film, played by Jeff Bridges, constantly drinks this cocktail, downing a total of 9 White Russians during the movie.
[00:15:54] It was quite a niche drink before, but after the movie developed a cult following, this drink became something of a staple, and sales of one of the main ingredients, Kahlua, boomed.
[00:16:08] And for our final cocktail it’s time for perhaps the simplest cocktail of them all, a cocktail so simple you might rightly argue that it isn’t a cocktail at all: The Screwdriver.
[00:16:21] The ingredients of a Screwdriver are blissfully simple: orange juice and vodka.
[00:16:28] Like the Singapore Sling, it has the advantage of not looking like it contains alcohol. Vodka is colourless, and so the drink is indistinguishable from orange juice.
[00:16:40] And this cocktail has some wonderful claims as to its origins, all of which revolve around the fact that it’s a cocktail that can be drunk without people knowing it contains alcohol.
[00:16:53] My favourite one is that it comes from the mid 20th century, from American oil workers in the middle east.
[00:17:00] As an American oil worker working in the middle of the desert, before widespread TV, there were limited ways to pass the time, you had limited access to interesting alcoholic ingredients, and more importantly, you weren’t meant to be drinking when operating heavy equipment.
[00:17:18] Perhaps someone might have brought in a bottle of vodka from a recent trip, and there might have been concentrated orange juice provided in your base.
[00:17:28] So, what did these American oil workers do? They poured the vodka in with the orange juice. But this wasn’t Harry’s Bar in Paris with skilled bartenders and all the necessary equipment. So, what did they use to stir the vodka into the orange juice?
[00:17:45] A screwdriver of course!
[00:17:48] There’s another theory that dates it slightly earlier, back to World War II, to American soldiers who would add vodka to their orange juice, which clearly you are not meant to do if your job involves handling deadly weapons.
[00:18:02] And they would find themselves mixing it all together with the closest thing they had to hand: well, you’ve guessed it, a screwdriver.
[00:18:11] OK then, that is it for today's episode on a brief history of cocktail drinking and some of the potential origins or at least claimed places of origin of six of the most popular.
[00:18:24] For almost every cocktail it seems like there are half a dozen different origin stories, so they are all to be taken with a pinch of salt.
[00:18:32] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:36] What is your favourite cocktail, and why?
[00:18:39] What are some other interesting origin stories?
[00:18:42] There are loads more fun ones, and unfortunately we didn’t have time to talk about Negronis, Gin and Tonics, or the ridiculously strong “Zombie”.
[00:18:50] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:54] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
