A Cocktail With A Crust

Joseph Santini was a pioneer in mixology. He was born in 1804 in Corsica but moved to New Orleans in the 1830s. He started his bartending career at the then famous City Exchange where he soon showed his skills and innovations behind the bar.

Mr Santini’s is most well known creation was made during the 1850s. He called it the Brandy Crusta. This classic cocktail was either created at the City Exchange or at another bar called Jewel of the South, a bar he started in 1852. It first appeared in print in Jerry Thomas’ Bartender’s Guide from 1862. The cocktail was a departure from the much simpler cocktails of the day and so it was very well received.

A Crusta isn’t actually just one cocktail, it is a type of cocktails. Crustas always contains a spirit, lemon juice and sugar, sometimes in the form of a liqueur. In fact the name Crusta comes from the sugar rim that is supposed to be applied hours in advance to make it into a dry crust. Apart from that they are always supposed to be served in stemmed glasses with a long lemon zest spiraling around the inside of the glass.

Despite being one of the many classic cocktails created in New Orleans the Brandy Crusta was as good as forgotten until David Wondrich published the recipe in his 2007 book Imbibe! Finally the Brandy Crusta and Joseph Santini made a comeback and today the drink is almost as easy to come by as the Ramos Fizz and the Sazerac. At least in New Orleans.

Brandy Crusta

2 parts Brandy
1/4 part Orange Curaçao
1/4 part Maraschino
1/2 part Lemon juice
1/2 part Sugar syrup
1 Dash Angustura bitters
1 Lemon spiral

Wet the glass with lemon juice. Rim it with sugar and set aside. Shake the ingredients until well chilled. Place the lemon spiral inside the glas. Strain the cocktail into the prepared glass.

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.

A Message To The King

King Charles III was born in Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, George VI. He was only three years old when his mother, Elizabeth II, acceded to the throne in 1952, making him the heir apparent. He was made Prince of Wales in 1958.

Queen Elizabeth’s favorite drink was a Dubonnet Cocktail, most commonly prepared by stirring equal parts Dubonnet and gin. The Queen however preferred it prepared with two parts Dubonnet to one part gin.

King Charles’s preferred cocktail is said to be a Martini with equal parts gin and Vermouth but he is also known to enjoy a Laphroig whisky.

With a wink and a nod to the heritage of the late Queen Elizabeth II and to the preferred drink of King Charles III here is the King’s Cocktail. One part Laphroig, two parts gin and three parts Dubonnet. Stir with ice until cold and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The glass called Plum Martini was designed by Tom Dixon in 2016.

Congratulations Your Majesty!

May Day is Lei Day

Having been celebrated since 1927 and turning into an official holiday in 1929 today we celebrate Lei Day. Each of the Hawaiian Islands are represented by a special flower. The island of Hawaii has a red blossom from the Ohia tree called the lehua blossom. Maui has a pink flower called Lokelani. Oahu a golden flower called Llima. Molokai, the green flower from the Kukui tree. Kauai, green mokihana flowers while Lanai has a yellow flower valled Kauna’oa. Kahoolawe has a flower called Hinahina. Lastly Kauai the island of Niihau doesn’t have a flower at all but a sea shell called Pupu.

Italy at Random

In a world of Italian design mobilità studio has illustrated a series of products all being part of making Italy into the world leader in design that it is. All products are genuine design icons form the gondola bow iron first mentioned in the 11th century to Cini Boeri’s Ghost Chair made from a single sheet of glass in 1987.

On Friday April 28 you are more than welcome to join me at the Sempre Coffee Bar on Jakobsbergsgatan 7 in Stockholm when the new exhibition Italy at Random opens at 5 pm.

If you have any other designs or random products from Italy (or other parts of the world) that you think should be part of the collection please tell me and they just might find their way onto your wall, a pretty great place to enjoy world class design.

The Little Fridge Car

During the first decade after WWII, war torn Europe was slowly trying to rebuild its economies. Engineer and businessman Renzo Rivolta, the owner of Isothermos, a company that before the war manufactured refrigerators and electric heaters, saw the rising demand for a micro-car. Rivolta was also the owner of ISO Autoveicoli, at the time Italy’s third largest producer of two-wheeled vehicles. Together with two aeronautical engineers, Ermengildo Preti and Pierluigi Raggi he created the first Isetta prototype in 1952. Isetta being the diminutive form of Iso. Legend has it that they actually used a repurposed fridge door for the prototype.

As for the performance, the Isetta, equipped with a motorcycle motor, took 30 seconds to reach 50 kph. This was, however made up by the fact that it fit two adults and was perfect for use in the narrow streets of Italian cities.

To be able to fund other project, like his sports car ISO Grifo, Mr Rivolta decided to sell the license for the Isetta to other manufacturers. BMW was at the time on the verge of bankruptcy and quickly saw the potential of the micro-car. They upgraded the Isetta with a new motor, better suspension and added a sunroof making the car reach a whopping 85 kph. BMW ended up making 10,000 cars during the first 8 months making it more popular than it ever was in Italy.

Apart from Italy and Germany the Isetta was also manufactured in France, the UK, Argentina and Brazil and has had such an influence on the automobile industry that it inspired the creation of the Smart Car in 1998.

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.

A Danish Easter Egg

Wishing you all a very Happy Easter with this Easter Egg Chair designed by the Danish designer Arne Jacobsen in 1958.

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.

A True Design Victim

As much as it is a piece of innovative design the Up chair was also a political statement. The design was inspired by an ancient fertility goddess and the ball and chain symbolizes women being prisoners, not a victim of design. “Women suffer because of the prejudice of men. The chair was supposed to talk about this problem.”

Born in La Spezia in 1939 Gaetano Pesce went to study in Venice at the School of Architecture and then the Institute of Industrial Design. After graduating he worked with collective of young architects in Padua before focusing on design from 1962.

Endlessly researching and experimenting with new materials he started working with the trendiest material of the day, polyurethane. Standing in the shower in his Paris apartment in 1968 Gaetano Pesce got the idea to try and make a chair behave like a sponge. In his workshop he realized that polyurethane was a perfect material not only for comfort but he could actually vacuum pack his new design. Opening the four-inch-thick package his new chair would almost magically expand into its proper shape rendering its name Up. This extraordinary and irreversible performance was made possible thanks to the freon gas present in the polyurethane blend.

This easily packaged and shipped future of furniture design unfortunately didn’t last long. In 1973, after only four years of international success with the Up Chair turning up in everything from the James Bond movie “Diamonds are Forever” to photo shoots with Salvador Dalì, the producer B&B Italia removed it from its catalog. This was due to a recent ban on freon gas making the production as it was impossible.

It took until the year 2000 for the Up chair to to make its comeback. This time being made in cold shaped polyurethane foam and no longer inflating.

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.

Benvenuti a Venezia

Full of hidden meanings the Gondola Bow Iron is the things that make the gondola into a gondola. Every part of the decorative bow iron is there for a purpose. But let’s start with the gondola itself.

The origin of the gondola is lost to history but already during the 11th venture the distinctively narrow boat filled the canals of Venice. It was mentioned for the first time in 1089 and during the 1500s some 10,000 gondolas were used for transportation of people and goods.

The gondoliers were soon rumored to be a rough crowd that were gambling and extorting the people of Venice. This led to the upper classes buying their own gondolas and as the status symbols they were they started competing with color, ornaments and expensive fabrics. The gaudy luxury gondolas became too much for the authorities and in 1562 they made a decree that all but ceremonial gondolas had to be black.

The gondolas developed over the centuries but all of them are built in the special gondola boatyards called a Squero. The gondolas, being adapted to fit perfectly in narrow and shallow canals have no straight lines and one boat takes close to 500 hours. Many of those 500 hours was spent on the finishing touches like the many layers of water proofing varnish made from very secret family recipes. An important part of the gondola is the oar made by a Fórcola, an oar lock. Over the years they created the very intricate fork that you can see today. The fork is the holder for the oar that makes the gondolier able to move the oar in any number of ways. The gondola itself were continously modified and by the late 1800s the gondola makers started to make the left side of the gondola wider as a counterbalance to the gondolier. Today there are only around 400 gondolas left in Venice, compared to the 10,000 traveling the waterways 500 years ago.

The final touch on the gondola must be considered to be the beautiful bow iron or Fero da próva in Venetian. It is certainly there for decoration but every part of it has a meaning. The upper part symbolizes the hat of the Doge, the almost half circle under the hat is the Rialto Bridge and the open space under the bridge is the. The six rectangular shapes pointing forward are the districts of Venice. From the top, San Marco, San Polo, Santa Croce, Castello, Dorsoduro and Canaregio. The rectangle pointing backwards is Giudecca. The intricate shapes between the districts are the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello and finally the whole shape from top to bottom is the Canal Grande.

Be Our Valentine

Time to spread some love again! Actually, maybe it’s about time to spread some lovin’, not only on Valentine’s Day but keep spreading it every day of the year, to friend and foe alike. This year we let the beautiful Bocca Sofa designed by the Italian Studio 65 in 1972 symbolize the day.

However you celebrate it, have a Very Happy Valentine’s Day!

And remember to make Each Day Valentine’s Day!

Coming Straight From the Harbour

The magnificent Bombay landmark the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, also called “The Diamond By the Sea”, is often said to have been built by Jamshedji Tata after he was refused entry to Watson’s Hotel at the end of the 19th century. Watson’s was a luxury hotel with a whites only policy. Others claim that Mr Tata simply wanted to build this exclusive hotel as a gift to the people of Bombay to treat them to a Royal experience. What is clear however is that the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel was built for everyone, not just for the upper echelons of society.

The Indo-Saracenic styled hotel opened to the public in 1902 and was the first building in Bombay to be lit by electricity. The Taj Mahal Palace featured ceiling fans from America, elevators from Germany, a Turkish bath and English butlers resulting in an experience unmatched in India at the time.

The hotel’s Harbour Bar opened in 1933 as the first licensed bar in Bombay and this is where their signature cocktail From the Harbour was created. The story goes that two American gentlemen crossed the Indian Ocean in their yacht. When arriving in Bombay in December 1933 one of the men received a radio message from his wife with the news that the American prohibition was finally repealed. They promptly docked their yacht outside the hotel and headed straight for the Harbour Bar to celebrate with a drink. They asked the bartender to make them a cocktail that would quench their 13-year thirst. The barman, known only as John, created a drink worthy of their celebration. When asked what the drink was called, the bartender replied, “Sir, it would be an honour if you would name it, as it has been made today especially for you.” One of the men raised his glass and announced: “From the Harbour.”

The liquor glass was designed by the Indian painter, photographer, sculptor and designer Dashrath Patel in 1970.

Sending the Bat Signal

The multi-disciplinary Gae Aulenti was born in Palazzolo della Stella, close to Venice, in 1927. She studied architecture at Milan Polytechnic University and graduated in 1953 as one of only two female students in a class of 20.

After graduation she worked as a graphic designer at a magazine called Casabella Continuita before becoming a professor at the Venice School of Architecture in 1960 and later at the Milan School of Architecture.

Apart from her career as a graphic designer, professor and architect Aulenti also gained fame as a furniture designer. During the 1960s she produced a great variety of furniture gaining her a prize at the Milan Triennial.

The Pipistrello lamp is essentially a very successful merge of two very different design elements. The streamlined telescopic base with the feel of American design and architecture from the 1930s and the lampshade made as a tribute to the natural forms of fauna and flora of the Art Nouveau movement.

Gae Aulenti designed the Pipistrello lamp in 1965 and went, sketches in hand, to Elio Martinelli who got famous in the 1950s for his innovative lamp-company Martinelli Luce. Seeing the sketches Martinelli immediately agreed to produce the lamp. Originally it was intended for the Olivetti store in Paris but it was such a success it was later put into production.

The smooth shape of the lampshade, looking like the wings of a bat, made Aulenti name it Pipistrello, meaning bat in Italian.

As an architect Gae Aulenti is probably most famous for the transformation in Paris of Gare d’Orsay to Musée d’Orsay. In 2012 she was honored when the Piazza Gae Aulenti was inaugurated in Milan’s most modern neighborhood.

The Tastiest Malaria Treatment

Let’s start the New Year with simplicity. After a holiday season filled with Snowballs and Egg Nogs it is time for something easy to make and what is simpler than a Gin and Tonic?

In the Indian subcontinent, as well as in other tropical regions, malaria was a constant problem during the 18th century. To help his fever-ridden patients a Scottish physician called George Cleghorn became interested in quinine, a traditional cure made out of the bitter bark of the Cinchona tree, a tree native to Peru. Quinine as a malaria treatment had been used by Europeans since at least the 1630s when Jesuit missionaries brought it back to Spain from the New World. Doctor Cleghorn made a tonic from the bark but the bitter drink was too unpalatable for the officers of the Presidency armies, the military force of the East India Company. The officers took to adding water, sugar, lime and gin, to the tonic and the Gin and Tonic was born.

Originally quinine came in powder-form that was mixed with soda and sugar to make it more drinkable. The tonic became immensely popular in the British colonies, especially in India and the first known quinine-based tonics were marketed during the 1850s. Schweppes launched their first carbonated tonic in the 1870s and knowing their customers they branded it Indian Tonic Water.

As the tonic water is no longer used for treating malaria it isn’t very heavy on quinine anymore making it a lot less bitter. It is generally also much sweeter nowadays.

The glass called Relations and was designed by Konstantin Grcic in 1999.

Gin and Tonic

1 part Gin
2 parts Tonic Water
2 Lime wheels

Pour the gin over ice. Top with tonic water and add the lime wheels. Stir gently.

Santa's Favorite Drink

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.

The Cuddle Bowl

The Brazilian-Italian architect and designer Lina Bo Bardi was born in Rome in December of 1914 as Achillina Bo. Early in her life she decided to study architecture during a time when architecture schools accepting women were few and far between. She ended up studying at the Rome College of Architecture where she graduated in 1939. After school in 1942 she opened her own office in with a school friend but with the onset of WWII there weren’t many openings for architects and she had to take on jobs as a writer and illustrator for the Italian architecture magazine Domus.

During her time at Domus she was sent to Rome to interview an art historian called Pietro Maria Bardi. Despite her being part of the resistance and Pietro Maria Bardi being an ardent supporter of Mussolini they fell in love. After the war they had no other option but to flee the country for São Paulo, Brazil where Pietro had been commissioned to head an art museum.

Coming to Brazil the couple immediately immersed themselves in the Brazilian cultural scene and Bo Bardi was enthralled by the country’s modernist architects like Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa.

In 1951 she designed and built one of her most celebrated works, Casa de Vidro (the Glass House) in the outskirts of São Paulo for her and her husband. Here she stayed until her passing in 1992.

That same year, 1951, she designed the Bowl Chair. With her own design vision calling for “a process of humanization of art” she made the chair “in relation with the proportions of the human body”. The semi-spherical seat can be moved independent of the steel frame making it recline to whatever position the sitter prefers. In 1953 it was featured in the US magazine Interiors where it was described as a “cuddle bowl”.

Snowball Fight

The Snowball is a British creation from the 1940s made with the Dutch egg and brandy liqueur Advocaat, lime, brandy and lemonade. It is as Christmassy as the Egg nog but much lighter. The drink didn’t really catch a big audience until the 1970s when it started being served without the finesse achieved by the lime and brandy, ingredients needed to cut through the otherwise incredibly sweet Advocaat.

The earliest mention of the predecessor of Advocaat is found in Dutch texts from the 17th century describing a yellow-colored alcoholic drink made from avocados. Most likely Dutch sailors were introduced to a drink called Abacate during their travels to South America and the West Indies. Abacate is a yellow-colored alcoholic drink made from avocados that was popular in the area that is now Brazil. The Dutch took a liking to it and started to produce their own in the Dutch Antilles.

Back in the harsher climate of the Netherlands, where there were no avocados to be found, they tried to recreate the texture and look of the drink using egg yolk instead. The name Abacate simply turned into Advocaat in Dutch and the Advocaat of today was born.

Another explanation for the name, which is Dutch for lawyer, is explained in the 1881 edition of a Dictionary of the Dutch Language where it says that “Advocaat is a good lubricant for the throat and thus considered especially useful for a lawyer, who must speak in public.”

The glass was designed by Italian designer Federico de Majo in 2015 and is called Bilia.

Snowball

2 parts Advocaat
1/2 part Lime juice
1/2 part Brandy
3 parts Lemon soda

Shake all ingredients except lemon soda with ice. Strain into chilled glass and add lemon soda. Garnish with a Maraschino cherry and enjoy.