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Each year, World Cocktail Day is marked on 13 May as a way to acknowledge the dynamic craft of mixology and global cocktail cultures, which have enabled mixologists and bartenders to turn mixing drinks into an art form complete with its own aesthetic sensibilities.
While the history of this day, which is a global nod to cocktails, can be traced back nearly two decades when World Cocktail Day began to first get recognition, its roots are much deeper and go further back in time. This is because cocktails have had a very colourful and rich past, that goes back to as early as the start of the 19th century.
Origins Of The Word ‘Cocktail’
It was in 1806 that the first known definition of the word ‘cocktail’ appeared in the American newspaper, The Balance And Columbian Repository, in which editor Harry Croswell published it as a response to a question from a reader.
In his editorial, Crosswell wrote, “A cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.”
This was essentially the blueprint of what is today known prominently as the old-fashioned cocktail, which can be brought together using 30 ml whisky, a dash of bitters and about 10 ml simple syrup.
The definition of what is recognised as the modern cocktail appeared on 13 May in the newspaper, a date which later began to be commemorated as World Cocktail Day.
This is because it was for the first time in history that a ‘cocktail’ was acknowledged as a separate category of a drink. With this began a novel era of cocktail culture and mixology that would later proliferate across the globe so much so that this day is marked every year as a toast to classic, contemporary and avant garde recipes that continue to build into the repository of cocktail blends.
Spirits In The 19th Century
One of the reasons that cocktails began to get wider recognition in the early 1800s is because of the growing presence of different spirits such as the London Dry gin in London and dark and white rum along Cuban and Caribbean coasts, which were both fascinating additions to drink blends. The invention of classic mixes like the gimlet, gin and tonic, mojitos, daiquiris and the rum punch soon became responsible for spreading the knowledge of mixology and cocktail craft across countries.
The growing popularity of these drinks spread around the globe, such that American and European cocktail traditions began to witness large-scale appeal. For instance, it was in New Orleans that some of the more famed blends like the sazerac and the ramos gin fizz first made an appearance, which contributed to the rise of American cocktails.
Rise In Mid-1900s and 2000s
Long before speakeasies, tiki bars and cosmopolitan drinks entered the mixology scene, it was American summertime drinks and European aperitifs and digestifs like the negroni that remained popular cocktail options.
Following prohibition and the end of the Jazz Age and the speakeasy years, tiki cocktails and tropical blends began to see a resurgence and reinvention which led to the creation of a number of drinks like the martini cocktail, margaritas, Singapore slings and more.
It was evident by this time that such cocktail cultures were now spreading across the world and mixologists in different countries were dabbling with local spirits and ingredients to craft imaginative drinks.
With such an artistic rise of cocktail blending and mixology techniques, 13 May once again began to garner attention as a day that marks the international language of mixology spreading from the high precision bars in Tokyo to the botanically focused dives of London.
Today, World Cocktail Day which stands at the end of the World Cocktail Week hosted by organisations like The Museum Of The American Cocktail, is marked by bartenders and mixologists alike, with limited edition cocktail menus, cocktail workshops, cultural dives into cocktail histories and many more events in a move to cement cocktail making as an enduring and dynamic craft.
