Hot Toddy

The history of the Toddy dates all the way back to British-controlled India in the early 17th century. The Hindi word “taddy” meant “beverage made from fermented taddy palm sap” a drink that was served cold. By 1786 the British had changed the official meaning of taddy and defined it as “a beverage made of alcoholic liquor with hot water, sugar, and spices”. The British claimed it as their own and started serving it in pubs during the winter months using Scotch whisky, hot water and exotic spices from India.

At the time of the American revolutionary war in 1775 the Hot Toddy had reached North America. The soldiers exchanged the Scotch to rum and brandy and drank it before battle as a “liquid courage”.

Another story tells of a 19th-century Irish physician named Dr. Robert Bentley Todd who used to prescribe his patients a mix of brandy, cinnamon, sugar and hot water, making it a Toddy. An article in the Vermont paper the Burlington Free Press in 1837 about “How to Take Cold” made the Hot Toddy out to be a cure-all. The trick, the article stated, if your child begins to snuffle, has a feverish breath and you don’t want to call on a doctor, is to first feed it excessive amounts and then give it a Hot Toddy. These recommendations have changed a bit since.

THE DESIGNER
Dubbed by the press as “The Man Who Shaped America” and “The Father of Streamlining” Raymond Loewy was a French-born American industrial designer born in Paris in 1893. Loewy moved to New York in 1919 where he early on worked as an illustrator for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. During his career he made everything from streamlined locomotives, buses, cars, interiors for the Concorde and for the Apollo space mission to logos for Exxon, Shell, TWA, BP and more. The cup, Form 2000, Loewy designed in 1954 for Rosenthal.

HOT TODDY DAY, JANUARY 11
Celebrate the Hot Toddy Day with a cup of this magnificently warming drink and try it with your favorite barrel aged spirit. Be it rum, whisky, bourbon, brandy or cognac.

Bloody Mary

THE DRINK
Mary Tudor took the throne as Mary I in 1553, the first ever queen of England and Ireland. She despised Henry VIII’s Reformation and wanted to return England to the Catholic Church. She reinstituted The Heresy Acts and persecuted and burned hundreds of Protestants at the stake, earning her the nickname “Bloody Mary.”

The predecessor to the Bloody Mary drink was the Oyster Cocktail, a drink that reportedly came to London from the Manhattan Club in New York in 1892. The drink closely resembles a modern day Bloody Mary save for the fact that it was non-alcoholic, was served warm and contained seven small oysters. It quickly evolved into the still alcohol free Tomato Juice Cocktail that was extremely popular as a health tonic during the 1920s. The Bloody Mary is often attributed to a bartender named Fernand “Pete” Petiot, who is said to have created his first version in the early 1920s at Harry’s American Bar in Paris. After Prohibition, Petiot moved to New York where he presided over the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel. Here he enhanced the drink with horseradish, Tabasco, lemon juice and celery salt creating the drink we know today. But as with most classic drinks there are several origin stories.

The Vaudeville performer and Hollywood actor George Jessel claimed he created the Bloody Mary in 1927. After a heavy night of drinking in Palm Beach he and a friend were still at it at 8 am. Having a volleyball date with a Vanderbilt at 9.30 he asked the bartender for a hang over and sobering up cure. The bartender reached for a bottle gathering dust at the bottom shelf, a bottle of vodka. Thinking it smelled like rotten potatoes he asked for Worchestershire Sauce, tomato juice and lemon to cover it up. Feeling better he realized he had created a new drink. A friend called Mary came into the bar still wearing her white evening gown. Trying the drink she spilled it over her dress and exclaimed “Now you can call me Bloody Mary.”

As for the celery stick garnish, it didn’t appear until the 1950s or 1960s at the Byfield’s Pump Room in Chicago. Frequented by stars like Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor and the like it was called “the most famous restaurant in the USA”, at least by the owner, Ernie Byfield himself. One of the celebrity guests, no one knows who, asked for a celery stick when the bar had run out of swizzle sticks.

THE DESIGNER
Ingegerd Råman was born in Stockholm in 1947 and is one of Sweden’s most beloved designers. Originally working with ceramics she has had a long parallel career as a glass designer. Starting at Johansfors Glassworks, (1968–1972), she continued to Skruf in 1981. In 1990 she started at Orrefors, where she stayed for 13 years, becoming one of their most influential designers. Råman designed the glass Slow Fox in 2000.

BLOODY MARY DAY, JANUARI 1
After a long night of New Years Eve parties, January first was the natural candidate for becoming Bloody Mary Day even though a Tomato Juice Cocktail or a Virgin Mary might be better for recuperating.

Leap Year Cocktail

THE DRINK
The Leap Year Cocktail is one of the few with a very clear and concise history. It was made by the bartender legend Harry Craddock, head bartender at the American Bar in London’s Savoy Hotel. More specifically it was created for the hotels Leap Year celebration on February 29, 1928. 

Two years earlier Harry Craddock had taken over as head bartender after another legend, Ada Coleman, was pushed out of the bar when The Savoy wanted to install an American as head of their American Bar. In reality Craddock was just American sounding. He was a Brit that had been working in the US, where he picked up an American accent. It was however good enough for Savoy. 

The cocktail is presented in Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book with a note “It is said to have been responsible for more proposals than any other cocktail that has ever been mixed.” Maybe because of the Irish tradition that on this rarest of days women could propose to men. According to the tradition, if the man refused the proposal, he had to buy the woman a silk dress, or from the mid 20th century, a fur coat. In the upper classes of other European countries, taking over the Irish custom, any man refusing a woman’s Leap Day proposal had to buy her 12 pair of gloves. Possibly so that she could hide the fact that she was not carrying a ring. 

THE GLASS
The glass was designed in 1999 by the Italian designer Ettore Sottsass, inspired by Greek mythology.