Have you ever wondered how some of your favorite bar drinks came to be? With unique names like the Moscow Mule or the Screwdriver, there’s certain to be an interesting backstory. Here, we present to you the origins of the most popular vodka drinks.
Screwdriver
The screwdriver cocktail is one of the oldest-vodka based cocktails. Its simple recipe of vodka and orange juice has made this one of the world’s most popular drinks. According to Victorino Matus, author of Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America, the name “screwdriver” came from American oil workers stationed in the Persian Gulf in the 1950s. To pass the time while working on rigs, they would add vodka to their orange juice. Because they often didn’t have spoons handy to mix this concoction, they used a screwdriver instead, hence the name.
White Russian
The White Russian is actually a modification of another traditional cocktail, the Black Russian. The Black Russian traces its roots back to 1949 and a bartender named Gustave Tops, who made the drink at Hotel Metropole in Brussels for American socialite and U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg Perle Mesta. The Black Russian was initially vodka and a coffee liqueur. The White Russian came about by simply adding creamer to the Black Russian. The White Russian has enjoyed a revival in popularity over the years thanks to the character of “the Dude” and his affinity for the drink in The Big Lebowski.
Moscow Mule
The origin of the Moscow Mule goes all the way back to 1941. It isn’t a Russian import, though; it was born right here in the United States. John Martin was a spirits distributor based out of Hartford, Connecticut, who had recently acquired a struggling vodka brand. John’s good friend was Jack Morgan, owner of the Cock’n Bull pub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Legend has it that the Moscow Mule was born in a fit of “inventive genius” by John and Jack one night when they combined vodka with the pub’s house brand of ginger beer. Martin and Morgan were the first to serve the Mule in its signature copper mug, which many regard as a marketing ploy to make the drink stand out. Good thing it worked!
Bloody Mary
The story of the origin of the Bloody Mary is quite contested. A bartender named Fernand Petiot claims to have invented the drink in 1921 while working at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, where Ernest Hemingway was a regular. Petiot says he named the drink after hearing his first customers talk about a waitress named Mary who worked at a Chicago bar called the Bucket of Blood. The 21 Club in New York also claims to be involved in this drink’s creation in the 1930s. Bartender Henry Zbikiewicz argued he first made the Bloody Mary, while frequent 21 Club regular comedian George Jessel has taken the credit. Jessel was even lauded in a 1939 gossip column The New York: “George Jessel’s newest pick-me-up which is receiving attention from the town’s paragraphers is called a Bloody Mary: half tomato juice, half vodka.”
