This festive cocktail is a riff on the pre-prohibition cocktail Stinger and it’s a perfect yuletide drink to enjoy in front of the fireplace when the gifts are wrapped and the Holiday calm sets in. Or by all means while sitting in the shade of a palm tree watching the ocean in the tropics.
The original first appeared in print in the 1914 book ”Drinks” by Jacques Straub. According to David Wondrich’s cocktail book ”Imbibe” an Ohio newspaper credited Reginald Vanderbilt with the cocktail in 1923 writing that he had served his guests Stingers since the beginning of the 1900s. It is said that Vanderbilt spent three hours a day mixing them for his guests during cocktail hour at his Fifth Avenue mansion. The cocktail has since the days of the Vanderbilts been associated with the upper class and was featured in many movies like ”High Society” from 1956 with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Cary Grant orders one in the 1957 ”Kiss Them for Me” and James Bond drinks a Stinger in the 1956 ”Diamonds Are Forever”.
The glass called “Sukat Makkaralla”, Finnish for “Socks rolled down” was designed in 2010 for Marimekko by the Finnish designer Anu Penttinen.
