The library
Where drinks came from, told from the record. Where the record runs out and the stories begin, we say so.
The age of punch · 1632 to 1850
Two centuries before anyone wrote down the word cocktail, sailors of the English East India trade were sharing a bowl of spirit, citrus, sugar and water. This is where mixed drinks begin.
5 min read · 4 sources
Drinks along the trade routes · 1800 to 2010
Sugar cane, grapes, grain and soda water traveled the trade routes long before the cocktail did. Seven drinks from seven countries show how a spirit becomes a habit: caipirinha, pisco sour, highball, somaek, poncha, spritz and michelada.
7 min read · 17 sources
Prohibition · 1920 to 1933
When the United States went dry in 1920, its bartenders did not stop working. They moved. Paris, London and above all Havana took them in, and the cocktail came home thirteen years later speaking rum and French.
6 min read · 7 sources
The tiki era · 1934 to 1980
A Hollywood bar in 1934, an Oakland rival, a Mai Tai with two fathers and a Puerto Rican hotel drink: the tropical cocktail was an American invention, and the people whose islands it borrowed have something to say about it.
6 min read · 9 sources