Episode 57: Cosmpolitan

  • 2 ounces vodka

  • 1 ounce cranberry juice cocktail

  • ¾ ounce fresh lime juice

  • ¾ ounce triple sec (Cointreau)

  • Orange or lemon twist (garnish) 

Combine vodka, cranberry juice, lime juice, and triple sec in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake vigorously until frosty.

Strain into a chilled martini glass. I recommend double straining to capture any ice shards broken off in the shaker. Garnish with an orange or lemon twist if desired.

There are few cocktails more immediately recognizable than a Cosmopolitan. This blush-pink cocktail with sweet-tart blend of vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime juices served in a tall martini glass is completely synonymous with 1999 or the early 2000s. That’s because, while the cocktail was around earlier and had some moderate popularity, the cosmo didn’t become the ubiquitous girly drink we know it as today until it appeared in the second season of Sex and the City in 1999. After that the drink made several cameos on the show, and for a good decade became one of, if not the, most popular cocktail in America.

So we know why the cosmo blew up in 1999, but we don’t know exactly who invented it or when or where, because about a dozen different origin stories exist.  

Some people believe it evolved from a 1930s era cocktail called a Cosmopolitan Daisy that was made with gin, Cointreau, Lemon Juice, and Raspberry Syrup. Others believe it was invented by the gay community in Provincetown in the 60s or 70s. Some say it came out of Ocean Spray’s quest for easy cranberry juice cocktails in the 1960s. A very popular cocktail called the Harpoon is basically a cosmo without the triple sec, so many believe that’s where they come from. Others believe it was a play on a Kamikaze. Bartending legend and author Gaz Regan, believes the original Cosmopolitan was created in 1985 in Miami Beach by bartender Cheryl Cook when she added citrus flavored vodka and cranberry juice to a Kamikaze and served it in a Martini glass. Some believe that Dale DeGroff came up with the cosmo at the Rainbow Room in New York, and others still believe that Toby Cecchini first did at New York’s Odeon restaurant in Tribeca.

What we do know is that before Sex and the city, Cecchini’s Odeon version using Absolut Citron and Cointreau was by far the most popular and well known recipe out there. The Odeon was a very trendy restaurant and the cosmo spread from there all over Manhattan, which is probably how it landed on Sex and the City in the first place.   

And the rest is history.

Episode 46: Sea Breeze

  • 2 oz vodka

  • 3 oz cranberry juice

  • 1 1/2 grapefruit juice

  • Lime slice for garnish (optional)

Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour Vodka and Cranberry into glass and stir. Top with Grapefruit juice. Garnish with lime and serve with a straw.

sea breeze

Most of us think of the Sea Breeze as a cocktail from the 1980s, and while they certainly were very popular then, they actually first blew up at the end of the 1960s thanks to some high profile marketing.

In the early 60s, vodka’s popularity hit a stumbling block thanks to the cold war and the fact that Americans saw vodka as a Russian liquor. So, the people at Smirnoff threw a bunch of money into rebranding, and by the end of the decade, gin was out, and vodka was taking over as America’s clear liquor of choice.

Part of the reason they were so successful was a push to find vodka based cocktails that were easy to make and easy to drink. Thanks to big vodka’s marketing dollars, a whole category of vodka based “coolers” took off at the end of the 60s. It started with the cape codder, or vodka & cranberry which used to go by the name “Harpoon” when it was made with gin. But there was also the greyhound – vodka and grapefruit juice, and the salty dog, which added a salt rim to a greyhound. Then there was the sea breeze, which combined the cranberry and grapefruit juices, and the bay breeze, which was made with cranberry and pineapple juice.

This on its own probably would have been enough to make these vodka based coolers into American cocktail classics, but as it turned out, vodka wasn’t the only beverage in the 60s that needed a rebrand.

In 1959, a bunch of cranberries in the Pacific Northwest were found to contain traces of an herbicide called aminotriazole, which is basically a bog weed killer that caused cancer in lab rats. The U.S. Secretary of Health told people to stay away from cranberries if they didn’t know exactly where they were coming from, and cranberry farmers took a huge hit.

Enter a little cranberry farmer’s collective that formed in 1930 called the Cranberry Growers Cooperative. Today we know them better as Ocean Spray. In the 60s, to try to get people to start buying cranberries again, they started publishing recipe cards, booklets, and newsletters with all kinds of cranberry and cranberry juice recipes.

At the same time that vodka was pushing for simple fruity cocktails, Ocean Spray was also pushing cranberry juice as a great mixer for boozy drinks. That’s why so many of the vodka coolers that became so popular at the time called for cranberry juice. By the end of the 60s, these “breeze” drinks started appearing in the top ten most popular mixed drinks of the era.

Episode 33: The Sex on the Beach

  • 2 ounces vodka

  • 1/2 ounce peach schnapps

  • 1 1/2 ounces orange juice

  • 1 1/2 ounces cranberry juice

  • Ice

  • Optional Garnish: Orange slice, maraschino cherry, cocktail umbrella  

Fill a hurricane glass or a large highball glass with ice. Pour vodka, schnapps, & orange juice over the ice, and then slowly & carefully top with cranberry juice for a layered effect. Garnish with an orange slice, a maraschino cherry, and a cocktail umbrella. Serve with a straw to stir the drink together.

sexonthebeach.jpg

By the 1980s, American cocktail culture had lost it’s way a bit. We’d moved as far as possible from the carefully crafted, well balanced cocktails of the past and replaced them with anything and everything sweet, fruity, colorful, and easy to make. If you could taste the alcohol, you were doing it wrong.

Vodka was especially popular in the 80s, as was orange juice (boxed not fresh), along with fruity flavored liqueurs, tropical flavors, bright colors, layered cocktails and shots, and drinks with sexy names.

When it comes to typical cocktails of the 1980s, the Sex on the Beach has it all!

As for the drink’s history, one origin story claims that a bartender named Ted invented the drink in 1987 at a Florida bar called Confetti’s. He says he was challenged to a peach schnapps sales contest and invented the sex on the beach to appeal to spring breakers. Unfortunately for this story, the recipe had appeared in print in 1982, 5 years before Ted claimed to have “invented” it.

The more likely origin story is that a bartender simply combined the Fuzzy Navel (made with orange juice and peach schnapps) and a Cape Codder (made with vodka and cranberry juice) into one fruity concoction.

Either way, people loved a sexy name, and when TGI Friday’s added the drink to their cocktail menu, it reached 80s cult cocktail status.

There are several variations on this cocktail. Some people add Chambord berry flavored liqueur. Some add pineapple juice. Some recipes even replace the cranberry juice with grenadine. This version is by far the most common and popular though.