Biker Happy Birth of the COCKTAIL Day!
Biker on this day in 1776 - In a NY bar decorated with bird tail, customer orders "cock tail", so inventing a most pleasurable genre.
“Betsy Flanagan mixed the first cocktail at Elmsford, NY. When a drunk waved at the tall feathers pinned to the wall behind the bar and asked for a glassful of “those cock tails”, she refilled his last order and stuck in one of the feathers.
It’s a bit hard to tack down the origin of this story, except for a few details, quoted from a 1998 post on Robert Hess’s “DrinkBoy.com” site:
Biker on this day in 1776 - In a NY bar decorated with bird tail, customer orders "cock tail", so inventing a most pleasurable genre.
“Betsy Flanagan mixed the first cocktail at Elmsford, NY. When a drunk waved at the tall feathers pinned to the wall behind the bar and asked for a glassful of “those cock tails”, she refilled his last order and stuck in one of the feathers.
It’s a bit hard to tack down the origin of this story, except for a few details, quoted from a 1998 post on Robert Hess’s “DrinkBoy.com” site:
What appears to be a very popular story, has to do with a innkeeper named Betsy Flanagan. Her husband was killed in the revolution, and she herself was considered to be one of the heroes of the revolution. In 1776 she opened an inn near Yorktown, which was frequented by American and French soldiers.
Nearby to the inn was an Englishman who raised chickens. Probably due to the current political climate, Betsy was none too fond of this neighbor, and she loved to promise her American and French patrons that one day she would serve them a meal of roast chicken. To which her guests would often mock her, claiming that this was all bravado and that she would never carry through with it.
On an evening that saw an unusual number of officers gathering at her inn, Betsy invited them into the living room, where they were served a grand meal of chicken, freshly “acquired” from the English neighbour. When the meal was over, Betsy moved her guests to the bar, where she proudly served up rounds of “Bracer” (which was a popular drink recipe at the inn). Betsy had decorated each drink with a tail-feather from the recently consumed chickens. To this, the officers gave three cheers to celebrate the defeat of this one particular Englishman. “Let’s have some more cocktail” one officer proclaimed. To which a French officer added “Vive le cocktail!”, and the drinking continued long into the night.
So as with anything Cocktail oriented, it’s basically “history in a bar”, and this origin story is highly suspect, but did that ever stop anyone from enjoying a good story?
Any of you have a favourite? Bob likes a "Bloody Mary" or like me is most partial to a "Gibson" - this is basically a gin martini with pickled onions rather than olives (olives are yuck by the way.) Though they do tend to be deadly; my good lady refers to them as liquid rohypnol.
She was born in 1762 and died in 1832. She was in upstate New York by 1803, when she was fined 6 cents for assault (she plead guilty) at the courthouse in Batavia. Her memory was still celebrated in Lewiston in the 1960s.
He went on to state that her headstone had been discovered in Lewiston in the 1930′s.
So as with anything Cocktail oriented, it’s basically “history in a bar”, and this origin story is highly suspect, but did that ever stop anyone from enjoying a good story?
Any of you have a favourite? Bob likes a "Bloody Mary" or like me is most partial to a "Gibson" - this is basically a gin martini with pickled onions rather than olives (olives are yuck by the way.) Though they do tend to be deadly; my good lady refers to them as liquid rohypnol.
