Have you heard the saying, “Life is nothing but a culmination of arbitrary choices, decisions, and accidents that result in reality”? If not, it’s basically what the butterfly effect is really about: how some small, seemingly trivial events may ultimately result in consequences far beyond comprehension.
If the apple hadn’t fallen on Newton’s head, gravity wouldn’t be a term we casually refer to. The person who first ate raw cookie dough didn’t know what kind of divinity they were giving to those after them. Similarly, the initial occurrences that led to the invention of some of our bar favourites were completely oblivious to what an impact they would have on history.
Have you ever wondered why classic cocktails have such peculiar, fascinating, or even weird names? What even is a Screwdriver? The Moscow Mule? A Sex On The Beach? Bloody Mary? It’s evident that classic cocktails have some of the whackiest, funniest names. But what’s even more interesting are the stories behind how these names came to be. So the next time you order your go-to at a bar, know this: you’re not just drinking spirits and mixers, you’re sipping on decades (sometimes centuries) of legend and lore.
So here’s some cocktail lore below, so that the next time you’re ordering a drink on a date, you can impress with some of these up your sleeve!
Singapore Sling
Perhaps the most geographically specific cocktail name, the Singapore Sling was created around 1915 at the Raffles Hotel’s Long Bar in Singapore. At that time, it was considered taboo for women to drink alcohol in public—imagine, the horror! And so, bartenders sneakily created a drink that looked like harmless fruit punch so men and women could enjoy it together without social scrutiny. So yes, you may call the Singapore Sling a symbol of feminism in cocktail form!
The word “sling” refers to a type of spirit served with water, sweetener, and sometimes citrus, which was a household term in the 19th century. Combined with the city name Singapore, the drink became a declaration: here’s a cocktail you can sip in a place unlike any other. Its fruity, pink-tinged profile made it a tropical go-to, long before it became a permanent fixture on menus worldwide.
Margarita
One of the best tequila cocktails and many people’s number one order on a night out, the margarita has been a mainstay in cocktail bars around the world for decades. Whether you like yours spicy, fruity, or frozen in slushy form, margs are really what brought tequila into the mainstream. And guess what? The invention of the drink was really just an accident!
This might be an urban legend, but the widely retold story about margarita’s discovery starts at an average workday for a bartender in Tijuana, Mexico. While mixing a commonly ordered drink in Mexico in the 1930s or 1940s, the bartender messed up! The order was said to have been for an older cocktail called the Daisy, which is a mix of brandy, triple sec, and lemon juice. As he was whipping it up for a customer, he is said to have grabbed the tequila instead of the brandy, creating a new world of flavour that was an instant hit at the bar, in complete oblivion.
As for how the margarita got its name? Margarita is the Spanish word for Daisy!
Screwdriver
The screwdriver is a widely loved and straightforward cocktail that requires next to no effort—it’s just orange juice in vodka after all. But, you might wonder (and rightly so), how does a drink with such simple ingredients end up with a name as out-of-the-blue as a screwdriver? Well, you have American oil rig workers from the ‘40s to thank for that.
Legend has it that in the mid-20th century, American oil workers in Turkish oil rigs would spike their orange juice with a kick of vodka while on offshore assignments. Lacking proper bar tools for obvious reasons, they stirred their drinks with—you guessed it—a screwdriver! Because that was really the only tool available to them. And so, this simple, almost mundane drink became known by the tool used to make it rather than its ingredients.
Negroni
The Negroni is among the few cocktails named after a real person rather than a place, event, or object.
In Florence, around 1919, at Caffè Casoni (now Caffè Giacosa), Count Camillo Negroni asked his bartender, Fosco Scarselli, to make his usual Americano stronger by replacing soda water with gin. The result was bolder and more bitter, and the bartender named it after the Count. Scarselli also garnished it with an orange slice rather than the lemon twist used for Americanos, hinting at the change in spirits.
Thereon, the combination of bitter vermouth, sweet vermouth, and gin quickly became a signature Italian aperitivo. Today, more than a century later, the Negroni name evokes a moment in history.
Mojito
The mojito, a second name for summer (thanks to how much of a staple it is), is a refreshing, simple, and smooth cocktail that is a classic in bars across the world, evoking the air of the Caribbean shores whenever and wherever it’s served.
Legend has it, we owe the invention of this staple to a certain Sir Francis Drake, who was navigating an unforgiving sea voyage in the 1500s. Faced with a scurvy outbreak aboard his ship—a common and often fatal condition at the time—Drake is believed to have tried to fashion medicine with whatever he had on hand. Hence, he combined rum with mint leaves, lime, and sugar in the hope of using the concoction’s perceived medicinal properties.
While we now know this was far from a legitimate cure, the mixture mistakenly laid the groundwork for what later evolved into one of the world’s most beloved cocktails. What began as a desperate attempt at medicine accidentally became a much-loved cocktail, proving that some of history’s greatest culinary staples were born of necessity rather than intention!
The Moscow Mule
A blend of zesty lime, spicy ginger and crisp, clear vodka, The Moscow Mule is the spirit of never giving up in drink form. Surprisingly, it came together when separate inventors and business owners were down on their luck and ultimately decided to join forces and rig luck itself.
A few different people came together in the making of the Mule, and guess what? None of them has any remote ties to Moscow! The first is Jack Morgan, owner of the Cock ‘n’ Bull bar on Hollywood’s iconic Sunset Boulevard. Morgan had brewed a ginger beer that wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves.
Then came John G. Martin, a friend of Jack Morgan, who had found himself acquiring the rights to Smirnoff vodka in 1939, a time when Americans were more partial to a stiff whisky or a quick beer. The friends brought their struggling products together, and, as a final touch to the drink, Wes Price, a bartender at Cock ‘n’ Bull, added fresh lime juice and ice to the mix. And so, a star was born.
However, it still lacked one signature feature that sets it apart from the herd.
Anyone who loves a Moscow Mule knows that it needs to be served in a idiosyncratic, signature way—in a copper mug. And this is where Sophie Berezinski enters the story. Sophie immigrated to the United States from Russia, and apparently found herself stuck with thousands of solid copper mugs she’d manufactured with her father. As luck would have it, she entered the Cock ‘n’ Bull bar around the time the Mule was giddying on up. Ultimately, the drink found its couple in Berezinski’s copper mugs, and the Mule became the Moscow Mule.
Sidecar
The Sidecar was born in the smoky, boisterous bars of post-World War I Paris. While there are several origin myths of the cocktail, the most enduring one connects it to a U.S. Army captain who arrived at his favourite bar—undoubtedly late—perched in the sidecar of a motorcycle!
Seeking warmth and distraction, he ordered his own personal mix of cognac, orange liqueur, and lemon juice. The recipe stuck, and so did its name. Other early references in cocktail books from the early 1920s use “Sidecar,” suggesting the name had already entered bartender vocabulary by then.
Bellini
The Bellini, a wonderful cocktail made with prosecco as well as white peach puree, was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice—an institution that has hosted everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Orson Welles in its time. Its creator was Giuseppe Cipriani, the same bartender-restaurateur who later invented carpaccio.
At some point between the ‘30s and ‘40s, Cipriani was experimenting with ways to showcase white peaches, a fruit that appears briefly but spectacularly during summer in northern Italy. He puréed ripe white peaches and topped them with Prosecco, keeping the drink light, fresh, and softer more than bitter.
The pale pink shade of the cocktail reminded Cipriani of the glowing tones in the paintings of Giovanni Bellini, the 15th-century Venetian Renaissance artist known for his luminous use of colour. Hence, the name Bellini is an ode to the artist’s art.
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