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2 weeks ago | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
At Bar Kabawa in New York’s East Village, Kathryn “Pepper” Stashek offers a cocktail menu made entirely of rum-based drinks. Unsurprisingly, there is a heavy Prohibition-era Cuban influence running through it: a Mojito Caballito, a Daiquiri No. 3 (aka Hemingway) from Havana’s El Floridita bar, a riff on the Presidente—and a Golden Glove. Stashek wasn’t, at first, set on including the latter, forgotten classic on the menu.
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1 month ago | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
On August 9, 1902, King Edward VII of England was crowned at Westminster Abbey. One year later, Joseph Rose, a bartender at Murray Brothers’ Café in Newark, New Jersey, paid homage to the royal event with his Coronation Cocktail. The mixture of French vermouth, dry sherry, maraschino liqueur and orange bitters won the Police Gazette Bartenders’ Contest in 1903; as a result, the recipe was published in the Hoffman House Bartender’s Guide in 1905.
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1 month ago | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
Way back in 1900, there was a hot new musical playing on Broadway: Florodora. The production had been such a hit in London the year before that it made its way to Broadway. The show became known for its attractive cast, particularly the “Florodora Sextette,” a rotating group of six actresses that figured heavily in the show.
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2 months ago | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
Every day at Whoopsie’s in Atlanta, the bartender on duty makes a selection from the annals of cocktail history to serve as the drink of the day. Each featured recipe is then recorded in a big Moleskine book, into which co-owner Tim Faulkner has been entering drinks for 15 years. The book serves as both an archive of the recipes and an easy way for any Whoopsie’s bartender to recreate a previously featured drink for customers who come in asking for one.
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2 months ago | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
When it comes to the tropical canon, rum is by far the preeminent spirit. Though it’s not the only spirit used in such drinks, the bar team at Tern Club in Knoxville, Tennessee, which leans on tropical classics, is always on the hunt for recipes that show “a different spirit profile,” according to Jocelyn Morin, the bar’s co-owner. The fruit of one such hunt was the Tropical Itch.
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Mar 18, 2025 | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
It seems that all the major literary circles of the early 20th century were awash with cocktails. There were little cliques of writers, journalists and entertainers that would haunt the same clubs, hotels and restaurants, putting back a never-ending string of drinks between deadlines. And like Hollywood and Broadway before it, many figures from this milieu lent their name to a cocktail or two. But in some cases, multiple names were attached to the same mixture.
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Mar 5, 2025 | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
Alejandro Medina first encountered the Parkeroo 15 years ago while working at Anvil in Houston, where the bar program famously emphasizes the classics, both well-known and obscure. Medina, like Anvil owner Bobby Heugel, was a great advocate for agave spirits. There, early examples of tequila-based cocktails were of particular interest, especially if the drink was less expected, and had no relation to the Margarita.
The Parkeroo, with its mixture of dry sherry and tequila, fit the bill.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
When Shannon Mustipher was opening Glady’s Caribbean in Brooklyn back in 2015, she devoted a lot of energy to dialing in her versions of classic tropical drinks at a time when the available rum selections were far more limited than they are today. One such cocktail was the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. “I was interested in it because it posed a challenge for me,” she recalls.
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Feb 10, 2025 | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
The Ward Eight is, famously, the only classic cocktail to come out of Boston and somehow make it into the 21st century. Many say that the drink (typically made with whiskey, lemon and orange juices, grenadine and, originally, soda water) was born at the city’s old Locke-Ober restaurant, but its origins are disputed; after all, fine dining was not, at the time, a culture from which new cocktails often sprung.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
punchdrink.com | Al Culliton
When the auto manufacturer Rolls-Royce opened its doors in 1904, cocktails were already over a century into their existence. But there was something about automobiles—and airplanes—that seemed to go together with early 20th-century cocktail culture; it was all so fast and modern and debonair. The decades preceding World War II saw several cocktails honoring this instant connection—from the Bentley to the Aviation, the Pan-American Clipper and, of course, the Rolls Royce.
