It has more garnish, a few dashes of Jamaican rum floated on top and a final sprinkling sugar. But I’ll take Wondrich’s word for it, of course.) He continues, “it’s a quick bracer rather than a slow sipper you don’t hear of Smashes coming with straws.” True, while Thomas’ Julep and Smash recipes are virtually identical, the Julep is fussier. He explains it “gets its name from the way the mint was smashed up in the shaking.” (Thomas’ recipe doesn’t call for shaking, neither does the Smash in Harry Johnson’s his 1882 bartender’s manual. His book Imbibe! sheds some light on the 19th-century smash. I thought maybe some old version would be garnished with them or something, but there was nothing. I reread other old recipes looking for clues to a connection between Thomas’ Smash and Dale’s Smash. There were no lemon wedges in sight, which to me is the linchpin of Dale’s Smash. This was nothing more than a short mint julep, or as Thomas says, “a julep on a small plan.” His Mint Julep recipe calls for 1½ wine glasses (3 oz) of spirit and 1 tablespoon sugar, while the smash has 1 wine glass (2 oz) spirit and a half tablespoon sugar. But it was not the same Smash I had been making. It has a whole page dedicated to Smashes, one with Brandy, one with gin and one with Whiskey. Most notably, there's a recipe for one in the 1876 edition of Jerry Thomas’ Bon Vivant’s Bar-Tenders Guide - the first 1862 edition is widely regarded as the first bonafide cocktail book ever written. I realized there was also a drink called Whiskey Smash dating back the 19th century. ![]() I’ll be calling him Dale, from here on out - as he’s known in the industry.Ī little while later, I ran into some questions while picking through old cocktail books, as bar nerds like me often do. He's the man largely - and rightly - credited with bringing proper cocktails back to life in the late 1980s when he ran the bar at the Rainbow room (he also popularized the Cosmo). This is the version I fell in love with, which is closer to the recipe in Dale's first book, the 2003 classic “The Craft of the Cocktail” where the drink first appeared.Ī little background on Dale DeGroff. ![]() When I started barbacking at Clover Club in 2009 the drink appeared on our summer menu in our “Juleps and Smashes” section as the Bourbon Smash, and it was made with simple syrup. There, it’s listed as the Whiskey Smash and uses curaçao instead of simple syrup. I first encountered it in Dale DeGroff’s 2008 book “The Essential Cocktail”, one of the first books I drank my way through (my copy is a total mess now). ![]() The Bourbon Smash has been on my radar for almost as long as I’ve been into cocktails. The History of the Whiskey (Bourbon) Smash - A Personal Detective Story
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