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A traditional cocktail.

A cocktail is a style of mixed drink. However, not all mixed drinks are cocktails. A cocktail usually contains one or more types of liquor and flavorings and one or more liqueurs, fruit juices, sauces, honey, milk, cream or spices, etc. The cocktail became popular with Prohibition in the United States. During Prohibition the art of mixing drinks became more and more important to mask the taste of bootlegged alcohol. The bartenders at a speakeasy would mix it with other ingredients, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. After the repeal of Prohibition, the skills developed in illegal bars became widespread and heralded the golden era of the cocktail, the 1930s. One of the oldest known cocktails, the Cognac-based Sazerac, dates from 1850s New Orleans, as many as 70 years prior to Prohibition.

Until the 1970s, cocktails were made predominantly with gin, whiskey or rum, and less commonly vodka. From the 1970s on, the popularity of vodka increased dramatically, and by the 1980s it was the predominant base for mixed drinks. Many cocktails traditionally made with gin, such as the gimlet, or the martini, may now be served by default with vodka.

"Flaming" cocktails contain a small amount of flammable high-proof alcohol which is ignited prior to consumption.

The earliest known printed use of the word "cocktail," as originally determined by David Wondrich in October 2005 ^[1], was from "The Farmer's Cabinet", April 28, 1803, p [2]: "11. 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 second earliest and officially recognised known printed use of the word "cocktail" (and the most well-known) was in the May 13, 1806 edition of the Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York , where the paper provided the following answer to what a cocktail was:

"Cocktail 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."

The Sazerac, which is one of the oldest known cocktails, dates back as far as the 1850s

The first publication of a bartenders' guide which included cocktail recipes was in 1862: How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon Vivant's Companion, by "Professor" Jerry Thomas. In addition to listings of recipes for Punches, Sours, Slings, Cobblers, Shrubs, Toddies, Flips, and a variety of other types of mixed drinks were 10 recipes for drinks referred to as "Cocktails". A key ingredient which differentiated "cocktails" from other drinks in this compendium was the use of bitters as an ingredient, although it is not to be seen in very many modern cocktail recipes.

The first "cocktail party" ever thrown was allegedly by Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr. of St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1917. Mrs. Walsh invited 50 guests to her mansion at noon on a Sunday. The party lasted one hour, until lunch was served at 1pm. The site of the first cocktail party still stands. In 1924 the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis bought the Walsh mansion at 4510 Lindell Blvd., and it has served as the local archbishop's residence ever since. ^[2]

During Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933), when the sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal, cocktails were still consumed illegally in establishments known as speakeasies. The quality of the alcohol available was far lower than was previously used, and bartenders generally put forth less effort in preparing the cocktails.

Piña Colada with pieces of coconut

There are several plausible theories as to the origin of the term "cocktail". Among them are:

• Colonial taverns kept their spirits (rum, brandy, whiskey, gin, applejack) in casks, and as the liquid in the casks lowered, the spirits would tend to lose both flavor and potency, so the tavern keeper would have an additional cask into which the tailings from the low casks could be combined and sold at a reduced price, the patrons requesting the "cock tailings" or the tailings from the stop cock of the cask. This was H.L. Mencken's belief.
• Cocktails were originally a morning beverage, and the cocktail was the name given as metaphor for the rooster (cocktail) heralding morning light of day. This was first posited in 2004 by Ted Haigh in "Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails". and can be distinguished from the theory "take two snips of the hair of the dog that bit you", which refers to consuming a small bit of alcohol the morning after a "binge drinking night" to curb the effects of the symptoms of the hangover, in the belief that these symptoms are the result of a form of withdrawal. A cock's tail has many varied feathers in exciting colours as a cocktail has varied exciting alcoholic drinks mixed together. Further the cloaca in the tail of cock is the exit hole for many impure substances.
• Some say that it was customary to put a feather, presumably from a cock's tail, in the drink to serve both as decoration and to signal to teetotalers that the drink contained alcohol.
• Another etymology is that the term is derived from coquetier, a French egg-cup which was used to serve the beverage in New Orleans in the early 19th century.^[3]
• The beverage was named for a mixed breed horse, known as a "cock-tail" as the beverage, like the horse, was neither strictly spirit nor wine — it was a mixed breed.
• After cokstele or cock-stick, a type of weighted stick used for throwing at cocks as a sport. See Cock throwing.
• The word could also be a distortion of Latin [aqua] decocta, meaning "distilled water".
• In the village of Elmsford in Westchester County, New York a local bar ran out of stirrers and resorted to use a cock's tail feathers to stir the drink.^{[citation needed]}

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• Adam Freeth - Founder of Shaker BarSchools, UK and South Africa. Author of 'Professional Bartending'. Website: http://www.shaker-uk.com/
• Nick Mautone - Author of "Raising the Bar; Better Drinks Better Entertaining". Beverage Expert and food service consultant, former Managing Partner of Gramercy Tavern, NYC and partner in Trina Lounge in Fort Lauderdale.
• Simon Difford — UK drinks expert and author of 'sauceguide to cocktails' and 'diffordsguide to cocktails', now in its 6th edition.
• Wayne Curtis — rum expert and author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails
• Dale "King Cocktail" DeGroff — author of The Craft of the Cocktail and bartender at New York's famous Rainbow Room. Founder and current president of The Museum of the American Cocktail. Website: http://www.kingcocktail.com/
• Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh — author of Vintage Spirit and Forgotten Cocktails, proprietor of CocktailDB.com, founding member and curator of The Museum of the American Cocktail
• Joe Gilmore — one of the longest running Head Barmen at The Savoy Hotel's American Bar and inventor of many cocktails, including several for Winston Churchill
• Robert "Drinkboy" Hess — prominent cocktail authority and proprietor of DrinkBoy.com. Founder and current secretary of The Museum of the American Cocktail
• Gary and Mardee Regan — creators of Regan’s Bitters, authors of many books including The Joy of Mixology and New Classic Cocktails, founding members of The Museum of the American Cocktail
• Audrey Saunders — former bartender at Bemelmans Bar (New York City), proprietor of the Pegu Club (New York City), prominent mixologist
• David Wondrich — author of Esquire Drinks and founding member of The Museum of the American Cocktail
• Stephen Kittredge Cunningham — author of The Bartender's Black Book now in its 8th edition.
• Charles Schumann - author of America Bar
• A.J. Rathbun - Seattle-based mixologist, and author of "Party Drinks!" and "Good Spirits"
• Sebastian Reaburn-prominent cocktail authority,Historian and proprietor of 1806. www.1806.com.au and www.mixologymanagement.com

• Jerry Thomas — author of one of the earliest cocktail books, How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon Vivant's Companion (1862), and The Bar-Tender's Guide, or How to Mix All Kinds of Plain and Fancy Drinks (1887)
• David A. Embury — an attorney and author of The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948), a classic cocktail book and one of the first to be a serious study of the art
• Harry Craddock — bartender at the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, London during Prohibition and author of "The Savoy Cocktail Book" published in 1930

The word "cocktail" is sometimes used figuratively for a mixture of liquids or other substances that are not necessarily fit for consumption. For example, the usage of such a word could be as follows: "120 years of industry have dosed the area's soil with a noxious cocktail of heavy metals and chemical contaminants".

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Cocktail

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Bartending/Cocktails

• List of cocktails
• Mixed drink
• History of alcohol
• Cocktail glass

• Good Cocktails — Mixed Drink Recipes, Cocktails and a Bartender Guide
• Cocktails at the Open Directory Project
• Brilliant Cocktails - Vodcast, Mixology