Episode 20: Cocktail Historian & Author Dr. David Wondrich
On Dive Bars, the Narrative of Cocktails, and the totally not mysterious recipe for making Punch
Neff: So you’re the cocktail writer in a lot of ways…how do people get the history of cocktails so wrong? Because I get people as a bartender asking me all the time about the mythology of cocktails. It just comes up. And I have heard other bartenders—usually younger, but not always—say some of the most bullshit stories I’ve ever heard about the creation of (cocktails) that I happen to know about. And I don’t know nearly as much about the history of cocktails as some people in my position.
Dr. Wondrich: Well, it’s hard history. For one thing, only recently have we had the tools to even begin to approach it accurately.
Neff: What are those tools?
Dr. Wondrich: Those tools are newspaper databases, things like that, where you can search endlessly through newspapers and books and things. Just for one little tiny mention on the bottom of page six, right? Because otherwise, there’s no date involved. I remember trying to do this stuff in the microfilm era, and boy, that was just not easy. In one day at the New York Public Library, I could go through about two months worth of one newspaper. And that’s a day’s worth of work, which is a lot.
So that’s one reason; we’ve got new tools to do it. Another reason, nobody really gave a shit then. Journalists were involved. They put stuff in newspapers, and some of that got popular, and a lot of that stuff was horseshit because somebody wrote in asking who invented the cocktail, and the journalists would ask some bartenders and the bartenders would say, “Well, I did.” Because what else are you going to say if you’re the bartender?
The media…it’s not their job to to come up with the definitive history of a cocktail. It’s their job to say, “What are people drinking?” and to write it down.
Dr. David Wondrich
Neff: Well, it’s a funny narrative too, because I remember, when I moved to New York, within maybe six months, I was running a bar in Tribeca and I think it was Timeout New York called for cocktail recipe. No one had ever called me to put a cocktail recipe in the media before.
I’d made a cocktail that we had been making as I left Seattle, where I started bartending. And it was just, you know, it was kind of popular. We all made it. And I put that recipe on our menu, and they interviewed me about it, and I talked about it, and they credited me for inventing this cocktail.
I was mortified because I was afraid that all of the people that I knew that made it back in Seattle would see it and then just assume I was trying to take credit for something that I hadn’t invented. I don’t even know who made it.
But I imagine there’s a lot of that, especially when you have a media that doesn’t really have as thorough records as we have now.
Dr. Wondrich: Also, the media…it’s not their job to come up with the definitive history of a cocktail. It’s their job to say, “What are people drinking?” and to write it down. And then somebody’s got to go and sift through all that.
Sometimes there’s fact in there, sometimes there’s—just like your story—somebody they misquoted. I mean, the number of times I’ve been misquoted about stuff and the things that people have put in the media that I say about the history of cocktails that I’ve never said, you know…it’s instructive.
It really shows you, you know, how things can go wrong. And they do. But ultimately I don’t know how important it is.
There is nothing from America that the world loves more than American cocktails. Maybe some cartoons and, you know, Michael Jackson.
Dr. David Wondrich
Neff: That’s the other thing is I was just going to ask you. If you had to say why it mattered, why does it?
Dr. Wondrich: I can only say why it matters to me. I like to see people getting credit for things that they did.
There is nothing from America that the world loves more than American cocktails. Maybe some cartoons and, you know, Michael Jackson.
Neff: I’ve heard, I’ve heard jazz as well.
Dr. Wondrich: Yeah, but there’s not much more; cocktails are right up there. And the credit never got to the people who did the work, and I like to see them get their credit. A lot of them were African-American, not just in dive bars, but also in cocktail bars. In mixology, right?
The fancy mint Julep in the 1830s was a revelation to people. It was the first drink to use a fuck-ton of ice in it, just a lot of ice. Before that they put a little bit, like in Europe where they’ll give you one little tiny cube of ice
Neff: It was precious, though.
Dr. Wondrich: It was precious here too, but it took a bunch of black bartenders—many of them enslaved, no less—in Virginia to say, “If we put a shit-ton of ice in this and build this drink up big, it’s going to look great. It’s going to be fantastic. People are going to remember that it’s going to get noticed.” And they did it.
And partly it was just artistry. Partly it was competition and display, but you get this phenomenal drink comes up to New York and blows everybody’s mind in New York and sort of opens the door for people to say, “We’ve gotta use more ice in these things. We got to open up. We got to, we got to put a little flare into this, into our mixing.”
And you start to see that happening after the 1830s, with these African-American bartenders—and we only know a few of their names and not even their last names. Guys like Charles at White Sulfur Springs, who was an artist of the julep, and everybody who had one of his juleps wanted to go back for it.
And you see that, and it’s like, okay, I want those people to get some credit. People like George Vinegar-Holtz, a German immigrant, who in the 1840s was the Julep King of the Mississippi. You know, he made the best Juleps in Natchez. I want him to get some credit.
Even Henry Ramos. Everybody talks about the Ramos Fizz, but nobody knows a damn thing about Henry Ramos, who was a totally wild and interesting person.
Neff: I didn’t know his name was Henry.
Dr. Wondrich: Henry Carl Ramos. So that’s what I get. That’s what I like to see.
To hear the full conversation about the history of Dive Bars in America, check out this link or listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
While you’re there, check out our Masterclass Series featuring some of the best bartenders in the world, and our Spirits Series featuring deep-dives into brands & spirits you love.