Cocktail

We went to an event last night where one of America's Master Distillers, Dave Pickerell, was talking about his rye whiskeys made at relatively new distillery he co-owns in Vermont. It's called Whistle Pig.

In giving us a bit of a history lesson, he said rye whisky in the US pre-dates bourbon (e.g., George Washington was a distiller of rye). It was once an essential ingredient in many classic cocktails, but fell into obscurity during prohibition, until about 10 years ago when young craft bartenders showed a new interest in bringing back some of the old-school cocktails.

That led my wife to look up the word "cocktail" and it's origin. She went to Wikipedia and found this bit of amusing historical insight:

"The first definition of cocktail known to be an alcoholic beverage appeared in The Balance and Columbian Repository (Hudson, New York) May 13, 1806; editor Harry Croswell answered the question, "What is a cocktail?":

"Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else."

Don Martensen MPHS Jan 66

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