It is believed that the first "Bloody Mary" was prepared in the 1920s in Paris. "Bloody" cocktail turns 75
On December 1, 2008, New York celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Bloody Mary cocktail. On the first day of winter, the townspeople gathered in Times Square could warm up with the famous mixture of vodka and tomato juice for just 99 cents. This is the price that Bloody Mary was paid for in 1933, during the Great Depression.
Strictly speaking, the date of the holiday was chosen quite arbitrarily. 1933 is not the time of the creation of the cocktail, but the time of its appearance in the United States. "Bloody Mary" came to the country with the repeal of Prohibition, which in itself makes this drink very symbolic for Americans. In addition, the appearance of "Mary", as already mentioned, coincided with the Great Depression - a period when US citizens had something to drown in a glass. Perhaps, even now, the main reason for celebrating the drink was not a certain calendar date, but the global financial crisis?
The origin of the cocktail's name is also ambiguous. "Officially" it is associated with the name of the English Queen Mary I Tudor. This ruler was famous for her cruel reprisals and earned the nickname "Bloody Mary" during her lifetime, in the 16th century. It is obvious that the person who gave this name to the cocktail in the 20th century was familiar with the nickname at least as a stable phrase. However, it is sometimes said that the name of the cocktail is connected not so much with the personality of the queen as with the name of the waitress Mary from the Chicago bar Bucket of Blood.
Bloody Mary recipe
Three parts of vodka is mixed with six parts of tomato juice and one part of lemon juice. Then salt, pepper, tabasco and Worcestershire sauce are added to the glass. Preparing in a shaker.
"Bloody Mary" with its complex "biography" is no exception among cocktails. On the one hand, this is due to objective reasons: before a certain mixture of drinks gains popularity and people think about its origin, all the "threads" leading to the beginning of its history are often lost. On the other hand, bar patrons, as well-known fans of implausible stories, contribute a lot to the confusion themselves.
It is not entirely clear when and where such a type of drink as a cocktail appeared. If we compare data from different sources, we can only say that cocktails began to be made in the 15th-18th centuries, either in England, or in France, or in the USA.
Ways to make cocktails:
Build - the cocktail is mixed right in the glass.
Stir - a drink is prepared in a special mixing glass.
Shake - the ingredients are mixed in a shaker.
Blend - the cocktail is made in a blender.
Madl - the drink is prepared using a special "crush".
Origin of the word "cocktail" also described in many versions. Most of them agree that the word comes from the English phrase cock tail. How exactly happened is a separate question. They talk, for example, about a certain girl whom her father married off to a man who returned his missing rooster (without a tail). The girl was allegedly so excited by the prospect of becoming a payment for catching a bird that at her unexpected wedding she accidentally mixed all the drinks.
A less poetic version says that the cocktail is compared to the tail of a rooster because of its "variegation". And sometimes it is assumed that horse racing fans have noticed the relationship of the "drink-cross" with unclean horses, which, in turn, are called "cock's tails" because of the protruding tail.
If we digress from the cocks, then it is worth mentioning the version according to which the word “cocktail” comes from the English cock tailings (“piled up leftovers”). Supporters of this theory of the origin of the word believe that the first drinkers of cocktails, simply because of the lack of "pure" alcohol of one kind, poured everything that remained on the bottoms of several bottles into one glass.
Finally, some sources indicate that the word "cocktail" comes from the French coquetelle. This was the name of the container in which the French once served a mixture of spirits and wine - the "progenitor" of the modern cocktail.
Currently, the recipes for classic cocktails are recorded in the list of official cocktails. International Bartenders Association … (https://www.iba-world.com/english/cocktails)
In addition to Bloody Mary, this list includes, for example, Black Russian - a mixture of vodka and coffee liqueur. The history of the cocktail is again complicated: it is believed that, despite its "Russian" name, it was first prepared in Brussels in honor of the American ambassador. Also in the list are cocktails "Sex on the Beach", mojito, "Margarita", "Cosmopolitan", with which the singer Madonna once got into the frame, and many others.
In 2005, London's Umbaba bar began serving one of the world's most expensive cocktails. The drink, later called Magie Noir, was invented by the bartender of the establishment for a special order of a group of guests. The cocktail includes Richard Hennessy cognac, Dom Perignon champagne, blackberry liqueur, lemongrass, lychee and African yohimbe bark. One glass of Magie Noir in 2005 was offered for 333 pounds sterling.
In the 19th century, the British who were in India were forced to drink tonic containing quinine in order not to get sick with malaria. And so that the tonic did not seem too bitter, they began to add gin to it. (According to another version, initially the bark of the cinchona tree was insisted on gin, and then, in order to avoid alcoholism, they tried to replace this prophylactic agent with a non-alcoholic tonic with quinine). With time gin and tonic has become a common popular drink. Today, the tonic used in cocktails has become much less bitter, and lemon or lime are often added to it.
"Screwdriver" was invented in the middle of the 20th century. According to legend, American engineers working in Iran had a habit of drinking concentrated orange juice and vodka included in the ration, stirring them with screwdrivers, which they always carried with them. Subsequently, this ingenuous cocktail, in all likelihood, became a kind of compromise between "healthy" and "unhealthy" drinks for adherents of a healthy lifestyle that began to come into fashion.
However, it is not at all necessary to make such a compromise. Recall that cocktails are also non-alcoholic. Unlike, for example, non-alcoholic beer, they occupy a completely legitimate place among traditional drinks and are not considered by most people to be "the first step to a rubber woman."
In particular, the "sober" version of the same "Bloody Mary" is romantically called "Virgin Mary" (Virgin Mary). All the same ingredients are added to it as in a regular cocktail, except for vodka. The taste of this drink, in all likelihood, is very strange … but the name is well thought out.
