Change adds variety to life and changing your regular tipple can be really interesting! In summer it’s better to reach for lighter wines and spirits which echo the easy going season. In winter, try the full bodied warm wines which you can combine with hearty foods and the warm alcoholic tingle of high alcoholic content. But lighter and cooler mixed drinks are always in fashion no matter what the season. Young wines ranging from a dry white and to sweet rose as well as the ever popular reds and bubbly wines, everything is revamped as cool mixed drinks. Other cool mixed drinks which put in a regular seasonal appearance are bloody marys, margaritas, sours, martinis as well as different varieties of the ever popular Champagne cocktails.
Cocktails or mixed drinks are always in and out of fashion but a few remain popular for ever. From the 18th century the mint julep and eggnogs, and later on Hurricanes etc have been around for a long, long, time. There are many stories of where the original cocktail originated from. Some are weird and some are down right ridiculous like for example.
• One popular version reports the use of the cock’s tail or the rooster’s being used to garnish the drinks of olden times. Although I really doubt some one went so far as that.
• James Fenimore Cooper in 1821 wrote a book called as the The Spy in which the principal character called as “Betty Flanagan” was the main person who innovated the Cocktail through the Revolution. Again there is a belief that the story was based on tavern manageress called as Kitty who did produce mixed drinks. But again no one really sure.
• Again many people do believe the term cocktail came because of the main colors of the liquors mixed together to create a combination colors seen in a roosters tail but at that time the most of the alcohol was in the form of colorless spirits.
• In 1936, the British publication, Bartender, wrote an interesting story of English sailors, who were served a combination of alcohol with a long root which was in the form of a Cola de Gallo or cocks tail.
• Another much more believable story is of tavern owners trying to pass of the dregs of different ale casks as cock tailings. These cock tailings were of different alcohol mixed together and of a much lower quality and price. These were then referred to as cock tailings or cock tails.
• A few stories also abound of fighting cocks who were fed a mixture of cock ale, to get their spirits up.
• Cocktail may also have a French origin in the term coquetel which refer to a eggcup. When famous French man, Antoine Amedie Peychaud prepared a potion of his Peychaud bitters for stomach ailments and served it in a coquetel. The bastardized version came to be known as the Cocktail.
All the stories have a different basis and are very interesting explanations for the origin of cocktails. Cocktails are popular irrespective of the name and the weird stories behind them.
