Verdi's Favorite

In 1826 four brothers, confectioners from the Swiss town Pontresina close to St. Moritz, came to the Italian port city Genoa. The intention was work and save up money to emigrate and seek their fortune in America. Being successful and much appreciated in their new, supposed to be temporary home country, the Klainguti brothers decided to stay in Italy and set up a pastry shop in Genoa instead. In 1828 they opened Fratelli Klainguti on Piazza Soziglia in the heart of the old town in Genoa. The brothers soon became a beloved part of the city, especially among high society.

One of the most famous pastries at Fratelli Klainguti is the Torta Zena. Made with layers of sponge cake and filled with zabaglione cream, flavored with Marsala and rum, and topped with marzipan it is a cake found in many pasticcerie in Genoa today. The name Zena derives from the Genoese name for Genoa. Another of the Klainguti inventions is a brioche they created for their most famous customer, Giuseppe Verdi, who was a frequent patron of the pastry shop. They even named it after Verdi’s opera Falstaff and it was so well received by Verdi himself that he left Klainguti a thank you note reading: “Dear Klainguti, thanks for the Falstaff. Superb... much better than mine!”

In the late 19th century Italian pasticcerie, pastry shops, began transforming and adopting to the new Italian café culture, serving coffee and alcoholic beverages as well as lighter meals. This was a shift that spread across Italy and Fratelli Klainguti were part of this change. 

The creation of the Klainguti cocktail is lost in history but it is very much a part of the Italian cocktail culture. Probably made sometime during the 20th century it has a lot in common with its Italian cousins featuring Campari, Italian vermouth (even though it is usually of the red variety), gin and Prosecco. You could say that the Klainguti Cocktail is like a Negroni Sbagliato where the bartender didn’t use Prosecco instead of the gin but instead used both. Where the cocktail stands out is with the addition of Cointreau a product that doesn’t generally feature in the true Italian classics. 

THE DESIGNER
The glass, which is actually a candy dish, was designed in 1925 by the Austrian designer Oswald Haerdtl. 

The Last Word

HALLOWEEN
Halloween is celebrated every year on October 31. The tradition started as an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain when bonfires were lit and people wore costumes to scare off ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III decided that November 1 should be a day to honor all saints. The two celebrations soon merged and the evening before All Saints Day came to be known as All Hallows Eve, later Halloween. In the United States Halloween parties didn’t really take off until the late 19th century when a great amount of Irish immigrants came, fleeing the Irish Potato Famine. So shake up a Bloody Mary, Blood and Sand, Zombie, Death in the Afternoon, El Diablo a Last Word or any other Halloween-like cocktails to celebrate this All Hallows Eve.

THE LAST WORD
The cocktail was invented at the Detroit Athletics Club around 1915, a club originally founded in 1887 but remade in the early 1900s to cater to Car Company executives and other prominent Detroiters. Not only was the club exclusive, the Last Word was the most expensive cocktail at the club selling for 35 cents, twice as much as a Manhattan.

The Last Word might have been made in honor of the New York vaudeville performer Frank Fogarty. He was performing at Detroit’s Temple Theater at the time of the drinks creation, and the name of the cocktail might be an allusion to the monologue with which he closed his act. The recipe for the Last Word didn’t appear in print until Ted Saucier, an authority on food and drink, added it to his 1951 cocktail book Bottoms Up. In the book Saucier, a boulevardier according to New York Times, calls Fogarty “a very fine monologue artist”. After Bottoms Up the drink never really took off, until the early 2000s.

THE DESIGNER
The cocktail glass was designed by Polish-Ukrainian designer Wszewłod Sarnecki in 1964.

Straight From Peanut Country

This cocktail is not, as you might assume, named after actress, movie star and serious cocktail and Bourbon enthusiast Tallulah Bankhead. Instead, the cocktail is a tribute to the Southern blue collar tradition of putting a handful of peanuts into a bottle of Coca-Cola as a quick snack. This particular way of mixing salty peanuts into the sugary soda, sometimes referred to as “farmer’s Coke”, started in the 1920s when shelled and salted peanuts were first sold in small packets in grocery stores. The practicality of being able to have both food and drink in one hand, leaving the other hand free to drive your car or work made for it to quickly spread through the Southern states from Texas to the Carolinas. Basically all States that grew peanuts. 

According to the National Peanut Federation it was convenient in another way too. Workers with dirty hands didn’t want to eat their peanuts without first washing their hands. When that wasn’t possible they could instead simply dump their snack into their bottle of Coke. 

The Tallulah was invented by bartender Zak Kittle while working at Ollie Irene, a gastro pub in Birmingham, Alabama. The co-owner of Ollie Irene, Chris Newsom, had a great-aunt called Tallulah and her love for whiskey made them borrow her name for the drink. 

The Tallulah is made with whiskey, typically Jack Daniel’s, peanut orgeat, instead of the regular orgeat made with almonds and featured in many tiki drinks, Coca-Cola and a garnish of salted peanuts. 

THE DESIGNER
The glass was designed by Akira Minagawa, in 2021 as a collaboration with Sugahara glassworks. It is called Peanuts.

TALLULAH

2 parts Tennessee Whiskey
1 part Peanut Orgeat
2 parts Coca-Cola

Shake first two ingredients and strain into the glass. Top up with Coke and garnish with salted peanuts.

Enjoy it like a peanut farmer.

A Sgroppino on Ferragosto

Ferragosto is celebrated on August 15 every year. It is usually one of the hottest days in Italy and most Italians try to leave the cities. The celebration actually dates back to the year 18 BCE when the Roman Emperor Octavianus Augustus decided to establish several days of formal rest for the hard working agricultural workers of the Roman Empire. Even farm animals were released from work and decorated with flowers. The festivities started August 1 with more days spread out over August. During Roman times it was called Feriae Augusti, Latin for The Holiday of Augustus. (Augustus actually gave name to the month). The Catholic Church eventually decided to move Ferragosto to August 15 to coincide with the Assumption of Mary m. However you celebrate Ferragosto, cooling off the August heat with a Sgroppino is a great way to do it.

THE SGROPPINO
The Sgroppino was probably first created in a wealthy home in Venice during the sixteenth century. To be able to make sorbetto for the Sgroppino you need ice and the only households that kept ice during the Renaissance were the aristocrats and the very upper class. Ice was collected form rivers and lakes during winter and stored in ice houses for use in summer.

The drink could either be served as a palate cleanser or at the end of a meal as you would a limoncello today. The name Sgroppino comes for the Italian word sgropare, in Venetian dialect sgropin, the name still used in Venice, meaning to untie a knot, referring to knots in the stomach after a big dinner. The Sgroppino is made by whisking together sorbetto and prosecco to create a froth. Over time vodka, sambuca or limoncello was added making it more complex.

THE DESIGNER
The Narcisso glass was designed by Italian-American designer and sculptor Isabel Antonia Giampietro-Knoll in 1957.

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing and the Moonwalk Cocktail

It took the crew on Apollo 11 only 12 minutes to leave Earth and start orbiting the planet but another three days to reach lunar orbit. With 650 million people watching on television all over the world and with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility. At 10:56 p.m. EDT Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and became the first human to ever set foot on the lunar surface proclaiming “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. During two hours Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin collected samples and took photos before leaving an American flag to returning to Collins waiting in the orbiting command module, Columbia. After another four days they landed in the ocean outside Hawai’i in July 24.

THE MOONWALK
The Apollo 11 moon landing in the Sea of Tranquility was an incredible feat of engineering, effectively making the United States take the lead in the space race.

After returning to earth and a 21 day quarantine (nobody knew what disease or bacteria could be caught during space travel) the crew went on a 45 day, 24 country celebratory Apollo 11 “Giant step Presidential Goodwill World Tour”.

Before traveling across the globe they celebrated with cocktails and the first cocktail they had after returning from space was a Moonwalk. The cocktail was the invention of Joe Gilmore, head bartender at the Savoy’s American Bar in London. Even though the world tour took the astronauts to London Mr. Gilmore never got a chance to serve them his concoction at his bar. Instead he made the crew a batch of the cocktail and sent it to the US along with champagne and glasses.

THE DESIGNER
The glass, called Moonshot, was
made to honor the Apollo 11 expedition. Designed and produced by Libbey in 1969.

The Piña Colada Day

The Piña Colada Day was declared a holiday by Ricardo A. Cofresí in Puerto Rico in 1978, in honor of the drink, now known as a symbol of Caribbean culture. The best place to experience it is definitely at its birth place at the Caribe Hilton in Puerto Rico.

THE PIÑA COLADA
Piña Colada, means strained pineapple, and is referring to the freshly pressed and strained pineapple juice in the drink. The first time a drink named Piña Colada was mentioned in print was in an issue of Travel Magazine from December 1922. It was made with Bacardi Rum, pineapple juice, lime and sugar but most importantly, it did not include coconut. The name however, fits very well with this pineapple cocktail.

Nowadays, a Piña Colada is generally thought of as a creamy coconut-tasting drink and the original is usually referred to as a Cuban-style Piña Colada. The modern Piña Colada was invented on August 15, 1952 (the Caribe Hilton say 1954), after three months of hard work. Ramón “Monchito” Marrero Perez, the head barman at the Caribe Hilton in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico was trying to create a signature cocktail for the hotels Beachcomber Bar. He eventually landed on the Piña Colada possibly just adding Coco López cream of coconut, a new product in Puerto Rico at the time, to the existing Cuban drink. The change was big enough though to be considered an entirely new drink.

For 35 years Mr. Perez personally served Piña Coladas at the Caribe Hilton, making it so popular it was made the official drink of Puerto Rico in 1978. In 2004 the Caribe Hilton was presented with a official proclamation signed by Sila María Calderon, the Governor of Puerto Rico, in honor of the 50 year anniversary of the famous cocktail.

THE DESIGNER
The glass was designed by Agustina Bottoni in 2020 and is called High Spirits.

The 1962 Seattle World's Fair

These fantastic vintage glasses from the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair are the perfect vessel for a summery long drink, specially The Space Needle created by Trader Vic. Thank you @vignettesbymelissa for this amazing addition to the home bar. I absolutely love them!

THE SPACE NEEDLE
1 1/2 oz Light Puerto Rican Rum
1 1/2 oz Dark Jamaican Rum
1 oz Curaçao
1 1/2 oz Lemon Juice
3/4 oz Orgeat

Blend in a mixer with one scoop of ice.

THE HISTORY
The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, known as Century 21 Exposition, was a transformative event for Seattle. Held from April 21 to October 21, it attracted nearly 10 million visitors. The fair’s theme focused on science, space, and the future, reflecting the era’s Space Race.

Key attractions included the iconic 605-foot Space Needle, the U.S. Science Exhibit (now Pacific Science Center), and the Monorail. The fair required significant infrastructure improvements, including downtown beautification and transportation upgrades.

Century 21 served national interests during the Cold War, showcasing American scientific prowess. It also aimed to inspire youth to pursue science careers and influence international opinion favorably toward the U.S.

The fair’s legacy is still evident in Seattle Center, a permanent cultural complex. It contributed to Seattle’s transformation from a regional city to a global player, laying groundwork for its current status as a tech hub.

The event embodied a spirit of innovation and forward-thinking that continues to shape Seattle’s identity. Its impact on culture, architecture, and aspirations makes it a defining moment in Seattle’s journey to becoming a 21st-century global city.

From Hawaii to Oakland

This drink is also known as the Scorpion Bowl as it was originally made and served in a communal bowl for up to 15 people. The Scorpion is attributed to tiki pioneer Victor Bergeron aka Trader Vic, but rather than inventing it Trader Vic found it on a trip to Hawaii at a bar called the Hut in Honolulu. At the time of Bergerons travel the base ingredient was the local Hawaiian spirit Okolehao, made from the fermented and distilled root of the Ti plant. The Hawaiians were taught the distillation process by British sailors in the 1790s. In fact, the Okolehao became so popular in Hawaii that King Kalākaoa had his own Okolehao distillery. On a side note, the king was often referred to as The Merrie Monarch thanks to his habit of entertaining his guests by singing and playing the ukulele. When King Kalākaoa died in 1891, his sister Lili’uokalani took over the throne and became the last monarch of Hawai’i. 

Back in California Trader Vic modified the Scorpion by changing the Okolehao to the easier to come by rum. He kept the idea of a communal bowl and had a custom bowl made specifically for the Scorpion. In Mr Bergeron’s “Book of Food and Drink” from 1946 the recipe contained 15 ingredients, like one and a half bottles of rum, gin, brandy and half a bottle of white wine along with the fruit juices. It was made for 12 people though. Over the years Mr Bergeron modified the recipe quite a bit, simplifying the long list of ingredients and even made a single serve option. The one thing Trader Vic kept throughout the recipes is the Gardenia as a garnish. 

The glass is called Iris and was designed in 2009 by the Swedish glass designer Ann Wåhlström.

A World Filled With Cocktails

On May 13 in 1806 the first known definition of the word cocktail was published in an upstate New York newspaper, The Balance and Columbian Repository. The cocktail, as they wrote it, was described as “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters”. This is also the date Giuseppe Cipriani opened Harry’s Bar in Venice in 1931, home of the Bellini.

THE BEE’S KNEES
The Bee’s Knees was possibly created by the Austrian Frank Meier, during the 1920s when he was the first head bartender at Cafe Parisian at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. During WWII and the German occupation of Paris, Mr. Meier kept the bar open but being half Jewish he started working with the French resistance and handed information about the Germans staying at the Ritz to British intelligence. He also helped Jewish hotel guests escape the concentration camp roundups by providing them with fake documents.

The first time the cocktail was mentioned was in a news article from 1929 where it was attributed to the American socialite Margaret Brown. The article was about women-only bars in Paris and Margaret Brown, being a wealthy widow, shared her time between her home in Denver, Colorado and Paris where she was a frequent guest in these women-only bars. On a side note Margaret Brown also went by her nickname “the Unsinkable Molly Brown” after being one of the 712 people surviving the Titanic in 1912. Yet another background story is that  the honey used in the Bee’s Knees was added since it is a great way to hide the harsh taste of cheap bathtub gin. Putting it all together Margaret Brown might have had the cocktail in an American speakeasy and brought the recipe to Paris where Frank Meier made it his own. If so, all three origin stories could be true. But that, of course, is just mere speculation.

THE DESIGNER
Astrid  Luglio designed the glass called Travasi in 2023.

A Whole Year of Cocktails

Almost since the start of the cocktail print project I have been asked when I will make it into a book and finally I’ve got an answer. It is happening now. I decided to make it into two separate books with 52 cocktails in each. One cocktail per week for a whole year. Or if you’d like to go about it another way, all of them are also attached to a date or at least a part of the year. Like the Blood and Sand for International Scotch Whisky Day (yes there is such a day, February 8) or a Zombie to celebrate tiki pioneer Donn Beach’s (a.k.a. Don the Beachcomber) birthday. Or why not make a Saketini, a cocktail created for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, on the date the fair opened their gates, April 22.

The book comes complete with the history of the cocktail, the story about the glass designer and the history of the date that the cocktail is in some way attached to.

More information is to come but expect it to be ready in time to make a fabulous gift for the holiday season.

But first thing first. Here is a teaser. Enjoy!

The Boxer and the Green Book

This younger cousin of the Manhattan was created a few years before the American prohibition. First published in Hugo R. Ensslin’s Recipes for Mixed Drinks in 1917 it is also, according to Cointreau, probably the first ever American cocktail that calls specifically for the French orange liqueur.

As opposed to the Manhattan the Deshler is also specific when it comes to another ingredient. Instead of using a sweet vermouth the Deshler is made with Dubonnet, the French fortified wine created in 1846 to help the French colonists in Northern Africa cope with malaria.

The name of the cocktail is taken from the Deshler Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, one of three hotels owned by two brothers called Wallick. Hugo R. Ensslin worked at all three but he worked longest at their Wallick Hotel on Times Square, New York, and this is supposedly where he created the Deshler.

Interestingly, the Deshler Hotel in Columbus was listed in the African American postal worker Victor Hugo Green’s The Motorist Green Book. This was a guide book where African Americans could find hospitable lodgings during the time of the Jim Crow laws of racial segregation in the southern states of the US.

A more far fetched background story to the cocktail is that it was named after a lightweight boxer called Dave Deshler. After a pretty good career he finished his last ever boxing match after a technical knockout in January of 1917, the same year Hugo R. Ensslin published his book. So maybe this 5 ft. 3 in. boxer was worth a cocktail in his honor.

The glass is called Buster and was designed by Willy Johansson in 1961.

When Snail Mail Got Faster

Sending messages by air started a very, very long time ago. It was the Egyptians that figured out how to use pigeons for the job around 3,000 B.C. It took almost 5,000 years until a the son of Benjamin Franklin, William Franklin, in 1784 used the, at the time, ultra modern hot air balloon to send a letter to his son William Temple Franklin on the other side of the English Channel. Using balloons never did catch on though, since they aren’t very reliable, so as far as airmail went, pigeon post was the best option. That is until the first airplanes came along. 

The first recorded use of mail by airplane was three letters sent from Petaluna to Santa Rosa in California on February 17, 1911. But since the postmaster wasn’t involved the first official use of airmail was the very day after when Sir Walter Windham in India convinced the Indian postmaster general to let him operate an airmail service.

Cuba started their own airmail service in 1930 and this is where we get to the Airmail cocktail. Shortly thereafter the Bacardi Rum Company issued a pamphlet, Bacardi and Its Many Uses, promoting a cocktail called the Airmail, possibly to celebrate this event. The original drink was elegantly garnished with a real postage stamp. 

During the 1940’s the Airmail started appearing more commonly in bartender guides like in W.C. Whitfield’s 1941 book, Here’s How, where he described the drink as “It ought to make you fly high”. The Airmail also appeared in David Embury’s 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks and in Esquire’s 1949 Handbook for Hosts. 

The glass was fittingly designed for Scandinavian Airlines in 1998 by the Swedish designer Gunnar Cyrén. 

Airmail

2 oz Gold Rum
1 oz Lime juice
1 oz Honey syrup
3 oz Champagne
1 Lime twist

Shake rum, lime juice and honey syrup until well chilled. Strain into chilled glass, top with champagne and garnish with a lime twist and/or a postage stamp.

Happy Midsummer From Martinique

When most Swedes celebrate Midsummer by drinking schnapps and eating herring let’s talk about a cocktail being almost as strong as a schnapps, the very potent French Caribbean, Ti’ Punch.

Wherever you find liquor and lime you will find them combined in a drink. The Daiquiri in Cuba, the Caipirinha in Brazil, the Pisco Sour in Peru and Chile and the Ti’ Punch in the French Caribbean. In this particular drink Rhum Agricole is the main ingredient, a rum distilled from freshly pressed sugarcane juice rather than leftover molasses from sugar refining, normally used in rum production. This makes for a grassier, some say rougher, rum with a very distinct character and this particular rum distillation is unique to the French West Indies. Another difference that makes Rhum Agricole stand out is that it is generally 100 proof. This fact combined with the small amount of lime juice in the Ti’ Punch compared other rum sours, the use of cane sugar syrup and the lack of dilution from ice makes for drink quite different from the smooth Daiquiri. 

The history of the Ti’ Punch dates back to  when French colonists started sugar cane plantations in Martinique and Guadeloupe during the 17th and 18th century. The drink was probably created by the sugarcane fieldworkers to raise their spirits during a hard days work. The Ti’ Punch is so connected to the islands, especially to Martinique, that they made it their national cocktail. Ti’ is Creole for petite so the Ti’ Punch quite literally means small punch. Since there obviously were no ice in the sugarcane fields a purist would still never dilute the drink with ice. 

When traveling to Martinique or Guadeloupe you will find the Ti’ Punch everywhere, often presented for you to prepare yourself to. There is even a saying in Martinique “Chacun prépare sa propre mort” or “Everyone prepares their own death”. 

The Bamboo Grove glass was designed by Anna Perugini in 2020. 

Have a fantastic French Caribbean Midsummer!

This Cocktail is the Cat's Pajamas

As with many cocktails from the early 1900s there is not one, but several different origin stories. The Bee’s Knees is no different. In fact, even the origin of the name is up for debate. Either it’s just a nonsense expression like “the cat’s pajamas”. Or it derives from the word business. In the 1920s saying that something was “the bee’s knees” was short for exclaiming that it was “the business”, that is to say, something outstanding.

Possibly the cocktail was created by the Austrian Frank Meier, during the 1920s when he was the first head bartender at Cafe Parisian at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. During WWII and the German occupation of Paris Mr Meier kept the bar open but being half Jewish he started working with the French resistance and handed information about the Germans staying at the Ritz to British intelligence. He also helped Jewish hotel guests escape the Vichy government’s concentration camp roundups by providing them with fake documents.

The first time the cocktail was mentioned however was in a news article from 1929 where it was attributed to the American socialite Margaret Brown. The article was about women-only bars in Paris and Margaret Brown, being a wealthy widow shared her time between Denver and Paris where she was a frequent guest in said bars. On a side note Margaret Brown also went by her nickname “the Unsinkable Molly Brown” after being one of the 712 people surviving the Titanic in 1912.

Yet another background story is that the honey used in the Bee’s Knees was added since it is a great way to hide the harsh taste of cheap bathtub gin. Putting it all together Margaret Brown might have had the cocktail in an American speakeasy and brought the recipe to Paris where Frank Meier made it his own making all three origin stories true. But that, of course, is just mere speculation.

The glass was is designed by Astrid Luglio in 2023 and is called Travasi.

Roy's Roundup

The classic mocktail Shirley Temple is said to have been created for the child actor when she was enviously eying her parents old-fashioneds and wanted her own drink. A resourceful bartender mixed lemon-lime soda and ginger ale, added some grenadine and garnished the creation with a maraschino cherry. 

Being considered a girly drink, solely because of its name, boys wanted a drink they could relate better to (mind you, this was some 80 years ago) so during the 1940s someone came up with the Roy Rogers. Nothing was more popular amongst boys during the 40s and 50s than cowboys and actor/singer Roy Rogers was one of the most popular. Also Mr Rogers himself didn’t drink alcohol. 

Roy Rogers, also known as The Singing Cowboy or The King of the Cowboys was born Leonard Franklin Slye in 1911 and early took up singing and playing the guitar. During the Great Depression he actually worked as a cowhand in New Mexico making him a real cowboy. He began his long career in 1935 in the country singing group Sons of the Pioneers. A few years later he became star in his own movies, often with his wife to be, Dale Evans, and his horse Trigger, who got almost as famous as Rogers himself. He ended up making some 90 movies from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s and over 100 episodes of a weekly tv-show, The Roy Rogers Show from 1951–1957. Always portraying the good guy he was the cowboy who shot the guns from the villains hands rather than trying to kill them.

Interestingly, but not officially, if you watch the Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2 from 1999, the character Woody learns that he is actually the main character from a 1950s TV show called Woody’s Roundup. In the show within the movie he has a horse named Bullseye and a girlfriend called Jessie. It’s hard not to see the similarities with The Roy Rogers Show with Woody as Roy, Jessie as Dale and Bullseye as Trigger. 

The glass for the Roy Rogers is called Birds was designed by Tomoko Mizu in 2022.

The Roy Rogers

1/2 part Grenadine
6 parts Cola
1 Lemon wedge
1 Maraschino cherry

Pour the grenadine over ice into the glass. Fill upp with cola and garnish with a lemon wedge and a maraschino cherry.

The Last Heir To The Hawaiian Throne

Princess Ka’iulani was born in 1875 to Hawaiian Princess Miriam Likelike and Scottish-born businessman Arthur Cleghorn, during the reign of her uncle King Kalakaua.

At birth she was given an estate in Waikiki where she grew up next door to Robert Louis Stevenson. When Princess Ka’iulani was 11 she lost her mother and a couple of years after that she was sent to England to get a British education. While there, in 1891, King Kalakaua passed away and the new monarch, the king’s sister Princess Lili’oukalani made Ka’iulani the heir apparent.

She wanted to return to home but was told to stay in England during a tumultuous time in Hawaii. When she finally came back in 1897 Queen Liliuokalani had been forced to abdicate. Princess Ka’iulani identified strongly with her homeland and became a fierce advocate for Hawaii. She spoke out against the pending annexation of Hawaii by the United States and fought to keep the Hawaiian Kingdom independent.

Her efforts were ultimately unsuccessful and Hawaii was annexed by the US in 1898. Having struggled with poor health during the 1890s the devastated Ka’iulani sadly died in 1899, only 23 years old.

Twenty eight years later, in 1927, a new hotel opened in Honolulu, a grand pink palace named the first resort hotel built in the US. Sometime during the 1920s they created a signature drink, a cocktail called Princess Ka’iulani as a tribute to the influential princess. The cocktail changed name in the 1950s and is since then sharing its name with the Royal Hawaiian Hotel but the legacy of Princess Ka’iulani lives on as a symbol of strength, grace, and the rich cultural heritage of Hawaii.

The glass is fittingly called Princess and was designed by Bent Severin in 1957.

More Than A Philly Cheese Steak

If you are pondering what to drink with your perfectly cooked Philly Cheese Steak we have got the answer. As with pairing a wine with your meal, a Pinot Noir from Burgundy with your Boeuf Bourguignon or a Chianti with your Spaghetti Bolognese it just seems natural to pair your Philly Cheese Steak with a Clover Club cocktail.

The Clover Club was a pre-prohibition gentlemen’s club that held their meetings once a month at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia from the 1882 to the 1920s. The cocktail by the same name was probably first shaken up at the turn of the last century and was published in New York Press in 1901. It went from being a favorite among the club’s members to making it big in New York when the hotelier at the Bellevue-Stratford, George Boldt, was recruited as proprietor for the Waldorf Astoria on Manhattan.

After having had a good run the Clover Club fell out of favor. In 1939 it was even listed in Esquire Magazine as of the ten worst drinks of the decade and in the 1950s it started being viewed as a ladies drink. Maybe due to the pink color of the cocktail.

Interestingly pink was originally considered a masculine power color and as thus fitting perfectly at the gentlemen’s club. In The Great Gatsby from 1925, Gatsby himself naturally sported a pink suit. Little girls were dressed in light blue and little boys in pink, a color that was said to be “a more decided and stronger color”. This changed in the 1940s and suddenly macho cocktails like the Clover Club and the Pink Lady were giving way to Manhattans and Martinis. 

It wasn’t until the early 2000s when craft cocktails came back in a big way that the Clover Club started reappearing. As a tribute, American mixologist Julie Reiner, opened the Clover Club in Brooklyn in 2008, complete with wooden paneling, leather couches, velvet curtains and a tin ceiling. 

The motto of the original Clover Club went “Who enters here leaves care behind, leaves sorrow behind, leaves petty envies and jealousies behind.”

The glass called Fylgia was designed by Gerda Strömberg in 1930. 

The Clover Club

2 parts Gin
1/2 part Lemon juice
1/2 part Raspberry syrup
1/2 Egg white
3 Raspberries

Shake gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup and egg white without ice (dry shake). Add ice and shake until well chilled. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with 3 raspberries.

Enjoy with your Philly Cheese Steak.

Bramble – From Thorny Bushes to Smooth Cocktail

Working as bar manager during the mid 1980’s at Fred’s Club in Soho, London, Dick Bradsell created the Bramble in an effort to make a truly British drink. Even though you can’t grow lemons in the UK and he wasn’t able to find a good enough British blackberry liqueur. The blackberries did however take Mr Bradsell back to his berry picking on the Isle of Wight as a kid, getting pricked by the brambles, and you can’t get any more British than gin. 

Fred’s Club on Carlisle Street was created to be the ultimate members club for a younger crowd with members like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Aztec Camera, Naomi Campbell, Neneh Cherry and Boy George. But the music connection doesn’t end there. Fred’s Clubshared a kitchen with a seafood restaurant owned by one of the founders of the Ministry of Sound. The reason Dick Bradsell used crushed ice for the Bramble was that he borrowed the ice machine the restaurant used for keeping their seafood on display. 

Dick Bradsell started off by making a classic sour but serving up the drink as a martini style cocktail. This made it far too sweet so instead he tried shaking the gin, lemon and sugar syrup, straining it into a glass filled with fresh crushed ice in the shape of a vulcano. Finally drizzling the crème de mûre around it. 

The glass was designed in 2019 for IKEA by Swedish designers Pia Amsell and Barbro Berlin and is called Omtänksam. 

The Bramble
2 parts Gin
1 1/2 parts lemon juice
1/2 part sugar syrup
1 part Crème de mûre

Shake all ingredients but crème de mûre with ice. Strain into glass and fill up with crushed, shaping the ice into a volcano. Pour the crème de mûre round the edges of the glass. Garnish with a lemon wheel and a blackberry. Think of blackberry-picking on a warm summers day and enjoy.

Picking Italian Mushrooms

Massimo Vignelli was born in Milan in 1931. At the age of 14 he decided he wanted to be an architect and at 16 he started working as an architectural draftsman before attending Università di Architettura in Venice. Here he met his future wife and business partner Lella Vignelli, herself coming from a family of architects.

In 1956 Massimo Vignelli was commissioned by the already famous glass maker Venini to design a series of lamps. The company had already worked with Italian designers like Carlo Scarpa and Giò Ponti. This project was initially called 4040 Zaffiro a name that was later changed to Fungo thanks to the lamps mushroom shape. The collaboration with Venini lasted for a couple of years and the result was an incredible number of lamps in a vast array of colors.

In 1965 Massimo and Lella co-founded Unimark International with five other partners including Bob Noorda, famous for his Pirelli-posters. Two years later they started a branch in New York. Unimark soon rose to fame through their corporate identities for, amongst others, American Airlines, Ford, Gillette and Knoll and it quickly became one of the biggest design firms in the world. Being on top didn’t last for that long though. In 1970 the Vignelli’s left the company to start their own business, Vignelli Associate.

The Vignelli’s eventually changed focus to product and furniture design and in 1978 they founded a new company, Vignelli Designs.

During their entire career the Massimo and Lella complemented each other with Massimo mainly focusing on 2D projects like the New York subway map and corporate identities for American Airlines while Lella worked more with their 3D projects.

They both lived by the motto “If you can design one thing, you can design everything” and in the case of Massimo and Lella Vignelli they really could.

Another One From the Boroughs

When the Brooklyn cocktail was created, two out of five boroughs in New York already had their own cocktails, the Manhattan and the Bronx. The head bartender at Baracca’s Restaurant on Wall Street, Jacob “Jack” Grohusko, took on the task to make one for Brooklyn and in 1908 he published his recipe in Jack’s Manual. Mr Grohusko himself lived in Hoboken and his connection to Brooklyn came from the restaurant’s owner who was a Brooklynite.

The original recipe calls for Italian (sweet) vermouth but it soon became common practice to use French (dry) vermouth instead. This new version is how the Brooklyn Cocktail was presented by Jacques Straub in 1914, by Harry Cradock in his Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930 and in Patrick Gavin Duffy in his Official Mixer’s Manual from 1933. The cocktail historian David Wondrich did not agree and in his Updated and Revised Imbibe from 2015 he stated that the version with Italian vermouth is far superior to the more common dry Brooklyn. Thus giving Mr Grohusko right a little more than a hundred years after the cocktail was first stirred up on Wall Street.

The Brooklyn never did become as famous as its neighboring Manhattan and Bronx. Possibly due to the fact that it contains Amer Picon, a French aperitif that has been very hard to come by in the US.

The glass called Manhattan was designed in 1937 by Norman Bel Geddes.