Americans, already familiar with cocktails, introduced their travelling companions from around the world to their first taste of an authentic American libation. After returning from the US these travellers helped spread the merits of the new mixed drinks. Europe’s hotels and cafes added cocktails to their offerings in order to cater to the expectations and drinking preferences of American tourists, and soon the rest of the world would follow. Some European bars were simply called the “American Bar”.
In Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock (1938), a meeting takes place between Colleoni and ‘the Boy’, two opposing gang leaders, in the lounge at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Brighton. As they talked, “chimes of laughter came from the American Bar and the chink, chink, chink of ice”. When they talk again by phone, “the Boy” hears “a glass chink and ice move in a shaker”. Greene uses the sound of cocktails being made to demonstrate the wide cultural gulf between the young street thug and the older and supposedly more sophisticated mob leader who does his business at the fashionable American bar.
By the 1960s airline passengers could have cocktails served by shapely stewardesses in mini skirts. Some airline executives and customers viewed stewardesses as flying cocktail hostesses. As planes got bigger and more people had to be served in a limited amount of time, airlines embraced a more practical approach to beverage service with an emphasis on liquor served in tiny nips, small glass or plastic bottles containing about 1½ fluid oz (44 ml). Until 2005 South Carolina law required that bartenders make cocktails with nips instead of free-pouring or measuring into a jigger.
Despite the availability of comfortable international aircraft such as the Boeing 707, the SS France was launched in May 1960. By this time the male-dominated smoking room was gone. Aboard the SS France, the best elements found in smoking rooms, bars, lounges and cabarets of the past half century were combined to create the Café de Paris with the “longest bar afloat”, The liquor inventory on each sailing included 1,300 bottles of whiskey, Scotch whisky, brandy, gin and rum; 1,100 bottles of liqueurs; 1,200 bottles of champagne; and 8,500 bottles of wine.
The last quarter of the 20th century saw the advent of the cruise ship not as a means of travel but as a destination in itself. Some of these ships could be described as floating cocktail lounges. Besides cocktails at dinner and in the casinos, you could order a frozen Daiquiri at the piano bar, a gin and tonic at the sports bar, a Martini in the jazz club, a Manhattan at the cigar bar, a themed drink in the entertainment lounges, a Mojito at the pool bars or anything in the world with room service. In fact, aboard ship, you are never more than a few feet away from a Cosmopolitan.
While it is true that some of the most popular cocktails had their origin in the US it wasn’t long before Europe and Asia began to contribute their own classic mixes to the list of world-class cocktails. Outside the US one of the most important influences was the British Navy, whose tars had brought the taste of punch, the prototype of all cocktails, to the British Isles from India. They opened their on-board medicine chests to search for an antidote to modify the harsh taste of British gin. The best gins were flavoured with juniper berries, but some distillers in London flavoured it with turpentine when they recognized that the active ingredient in both was a class of chemicals called terpenes.
British sailors found two promising candidates: Angostura bitters and quinine. Angostura bitters is an aromatic compound made from herbs. It was created by Dr Johann Siegert, a German medical doctor who sought adventure and joined Simón Bolívar of Venezuela in his fight against Spain. Bolívar appointed him Surgeon-General of the Military Hospital in 1824 in the town of Angostura, Venezuela, today called Ciudad Bolívar. Angostura bitters are now produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. Siegert created his bitters as a treatment for fevers and stomach disorders and the Royal Navy carried them to treat fevers. When mixed with gin the resulting drink was pink, creating the cocktail called Pink Gin.
The Royal Navy is also credited with inventing the gin and tonic. Quinine, a medicinal tonic used for combating malaria, was also found in the Royal Navy’s medicine cabinet. Sailors mixed this tonic with gin, probably to cut the bitter taste. With a squeeze of lime, also on board as a cure for scurvy (the reason British sailors were called Limeys), you have a gin and tonic.
Mixing bitter herbs, botanicals and even quinine with alcohol to create a therapeutic tonic was common practice in the 19th century. These infusions, tinctures, elixirs and restoratives, all heavily laced with pure spirits, ensured brisk sales. If it didn’t cure you, at least you got a momentary kick.
Excerpted with permission from Cocktails: A Global History, Joseph M Carlin, Pan Macmillan.
