The History of Bartending (Part 1)
Everyone has his or her reason to follow bartending as a career. There is the financial security, the social growth, and the prospect of touching sensitive parts with another person.
But what has really kept me interested in this career is its history.
Bartending, or “pouring things into things” as it is more commonly referred, is one of the oldest professions next to prostitution and snake charming. A craft that harkens back to the good old days, when our grand parents and their great-grand parents would gather around a fire, weave a tale of hearty American ingenuity, and attempt to distill horse urine.
You see, before you can even begin to scrape the surface of the History of Bartending you need to fondle the under carriage of Distillation. Unlike wine and beer, which are historically connected to early advances in civilization like the cultivation of crops (i.e., grapes and barley), spirits require a very specific second step after fermentation: distilling, which is historically connected to civilization’s decline (i.e., WhiteClaw and Boozy Milkshakes).
While fermentation can happen completely by accident, distillation requires a very specific set of intentions. Anyone can stumble upon slightly fermented grain, but it takes a very special kind of mind to think turning it into moonshine is an improvement.
That’s where bartending really begins to take shape. Using flavors that some might find unpleasant and combining them with other ingredients (citrus, sweetener, bananas shaped like dolphins) to create something completely original. These early cocktails may seem basic compared to the kind you might find on a menu today but they laid the foundation for the classic cocktail formula many experienced bartenders follow to this day: one part ice, one part glass, and the rest part whatever else you can find around the house.
The cocktail possibilities are endless but where did this idea to combine ingredients originate?
Cocktails, as we know them today, were inspired by British punches. These were large bowls made of spirits mixed with fruit juice, spices, and other flavors. Punches were created in the early 17th century to mask the flavor of inferior spirits coming from newly discovered parts of the world and to cover up the harsh realties of being British.
Despite its potency, it wasn’t uncommon for large parties to empty dozens of punch bowls in a single sitting. George Washington once ran up a bill that included seven large bowls of punch, along with 60 bottles of claret, 54 bottles of Madeira, 8 bottles of cider, 8 bottles of whiskey, and 22 bottles of porter. The tab was so large that it was impossible to accurately split the check. Washington knew that one of the other founding fathers, probably Dave, had a few more ladles of punch than he was letting on.
It was around this time our nation began shrinking these large flowing punch bowls to individual sized punches, or, as it would come to be known, the boll weevil.
I’m sorry, I meant the Cocktail.
Recent evidence has shown that the term “Cocktail” likely came, and I am not making this part up, from the practice of inserting a piece of ginger into a horse’s backside. This practice caused the horse to “cock its tail,” giving it the appearance of youthful vigor and alertness. With this idea in mind bartenders would combine spirit, sweetener, citrus, ice, and bitters while trying to stay atop a now bucking horse trying to expel a wad of raw ginger shoved up its rear. This is also how shaking cocktails was invented.
Remember this was during simpler times when men where tough, women were homely, and both had full mustaches.
In the next installment of the “The History of Bartending” I will discuss the forefathers of the American Bartender, the kinds of cocktails they established that exist to this day, and what other ingredients our grandparents were mixing. (Hint: It’s more urine).