Hudson: Birthplace of the Cocktail?

The other night at the bar at Ca Mea, my friend Bill Hellerman (who knows a thing or two about bars, and film noir, and experimental music, and  country politics, and a few other things) mentioned that he’d read some years ago in The New York Times that the cocktail was invented in Hudson.

“What?” I said incredulously, if not too imaginatively.

Claiming to have invented the cocktail is like claiming to have invented the hamburger—as Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, almost plausibly says they did.

The idea of mixing alcohol with other liquids surely dates back to, well, the invention of fermentation... Just like the idea of laying a piece of fried meat between two slices of starch surely dates back to, well, the invention of fire. And hunting. And starch.

But it turns out Bill is right, at least kind of.

The first known definition of the word “cock-tail” did in fact appear in The Balance and Columbia County Repository, one of several competing political broadsheets published in Hudson in the early 19th century (along with The Wasp, The Bee, and others). The May 6th, 1806 edition of the Federalist Balance deployed the word in a dryly humorous poem poking fun at the Democrats, causing one reader to ask what this strange term signified:

“Will you be so obliging as to inform me what is meant by this species of refreshment? Though a stranger to you, I believe, from your general character, you will not suppose this request to be impertinent.

“I have heard of a forum, of phlegm-cutter and fog driver, of wetting the whistle, of moistening the clay, of a fillip, a spur in the head, quenching a spark in the throat, of flip & c, but never in my life, though have lived a good many years, did I hear of cock tail before. Is it peculiar to a part of this country? Or is it a late invention? Is the name expressive of the effect which the drink has on a particular part of the body? Or does it signify that the democrats who take the potion are turned topsycurvy, and have their heads where their tails should be?”

The anonymous editor obliged with his now-famous definition in his May 13th, 1806 edition, a reply now known to serious bartenders the world over:

“A cock-tail, then, is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind—sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because, a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.”

Now, admittedly there are many other theories about the word’s origin, and at least one prior known appearance (if not an actual definition) of the word in print. The Farmer’s Cabinet of Amherst, New Hampshire published this statement three years earlier, on April 28th, 1803:

“Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the head. ... Call’d at the Doct’s. found Burnham—he looked very wise—drank another glass of cocktail.”

The key person to delve into the etymology of cocktails was none other than the great muckraker and curmudgeonly critic H.L. Mencken. Writing in The New Yorker in 1948, Mencken reviewed more than a half-dozen theories, including the notion that apothecary Antoine Peychaud started mixing brandy with his famous bitters in an egg cup at Masonic meetings he held in New Orleans. The French word for egg-cups is “coquetiers,” which Americans supposedly bastardized first as ko-ket-tay, then as “cock-tails.”

However, Mencken finds it somewhat implausible that this idea could have migrated so swiftly, during an era of arduous travel, all the way from Louisiana at the end of the 18th Century to the Hudson Valley a few short years later in the early 19th:

“How did Peychaud’s invention, if it was his invention, make its way from New Orleans to so remote a place as Hudson, New York, in so short a time, and how did it become generalized on the way? [...] What puzzles me is how this massive fact, so revolutionary in human history and so conducive to human happiness, jumped so quickly from New Orleans to the Hudson Valley. It seems much more likely that the cocktail was actually known and esteemed in the Albany region some time before Peychaud shook up his first Sazerac on the lower Mississippi.”

Other theories involve slang terms for the tap on a whiskey-barrel to Revolutionary War soldiers triumphantly adding the tail plumage of a seized British rooster to the rims of their celebratory glasses.

This is indeed a deep and mysterious subject, one worth pondering over several drinks... But more to the point: How on earth has this astonishing claim not been seized upon before by history- and commercial-minded Hudsonians?

Coupled with Hudson’s once-sordid reputation for carousing, the promotional possibilities of transforming The Friendly City into The Birthplace of the Cocktail are endless. Whatever the disputes about origin, any former port town which once had over seventy bars can plausibly lay claim to this grandiose title—and market the heck out of it. Especially with endorsements from a hard-drinking cynic like Mencken and the Times.

Hudson ought to play host to an annual International Bartending Competition, drawing premiere mixologists from around the world seeking global bragging rights and gaudy trophies to set behind their bars. This time of year (mud season) would be perfect, when there’s not a lot to do and a paucity of foot traffic on Warren Street. One can easily imagine, in our Reality TV-obsessed nation, such a contest evolving into the drinker’s version of Iron Chef, complete with cash prizes and soused celebrity judges.

So, Hudson, what of it? It’s long past time to lay claim to “this massive fact.” And with that suggestion in mind, I’m off to PM for an Old Fashioned.