mental_floss
26 Alcoholic Drinks - mental_floss on YT (Ep.16)
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View count: | 1,143,489 |
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Comments: | 1,347 |
Duration: | 08:28 |
Uploaded: | 2013-06-26 |
Last sync: | 2024-09-25 04:15 |
A weekly show hosted by John Green, where knowledge junkies get their fix of trivia-tastic information. This week, John looks at the name origins of 26 alcoholic drinks including the Martini, Alabama Slammer, and the Sidecar.
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Images and Footage provided by Shutterstock: www.shutterstock.com
Artist acknowledgements for this episode:
Freaker USA: http://www.freakerusa.com/
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Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss
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Mental Floss Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mf_video
Images and Footage provided by Shutterstock: www.shutterstock.com
Artist acknowledgements for this episode:
Freaker USA: http://www.freakerusa.com/
----
Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine
Hi, I'm John Green, this is mental_floss on YouTube, and today's episode is about puppies. No, I'm just kidding, it's about alcohol. Hannah Hart, my friend, was supposed to host this episode, but she came to my house last night to film her program "My Drunk Kitchen" - and she is very hung over. I am also hung over, but I am committed to my craft!
1. Did you know that in Spanish, piña means "pineapple" and colada means "strained"? How do you make a piña colada? Well, I'll show you. [Let's Make a Drink! - Piña Colada] All right, so you need a pineapple, a coconut, some rum, and cherries. First, you strain the pineapple - put that in the colander - got to open the coconut - gaaaa, guh guh, gaaaa! Then you just get out your piña colada mix and mix it with rum. And... cherry.
So there's a lot of folklore surrounding drink origins, but we're going to share with you some of the stories that have persisted today.
[intro music]
2. Juleps tend to be sweet and watery, which makes sense, because the word comes from the Arabic "julab", or Persian "gulab", meaning "rosewater". A julab was a combination of water and rose petals - popular in the 14th century in the Arab world - the drink then became popular in the Mediterranean, where it's believed that mint leaves substituted for rose petals, because... they had them. And then the julep became associated with alcohol by the early 1800s in the United States, because we couldn't watch horse racing sober.
3. Ancient Spanish called all creations made with red wine "sangria", but it eventually became only associated with red wine made with fruit. Sangria didn't become popular in the U.S., by the way, until the 1964 World's Fair in New York. How do you make sangria? I'll show you. [Let's Make a Drink! - Sangria] What you do is you have Mark cut up some fruit, then you just put it in there - there you go! That's perfect! - Bam! Sangria!
4. The word wine goes all the way back to proto-Germanic word for the drink "winam". It came from the Latin "vinum", which meant "grape vine", because you know, what else are you going to do with a grape vine?
5. And from Ancient Rome to New Jersey in the 1980s. The founder of Bartender Magazine, Ray Foley, invented the Fuzzy Navel. He named it after the fuzzy quality of peaches, and navel oranges.
6. On a similar note, Black Russians are named for the blackness of coffee and the Russian-ness of vodka.
7. Add some cream, and you have a White Russian. Allow me to demonstrate. [Let's Make a Drink! - White and Black Russian] First, finish your coffee. Then, open up the empty coffee cup, pour in some coffee liqueur, and then pour in about twice as much vodka. Bam! To make it a White Russian, just - oh!
8. The cool and popular story about the Manhattan getting its name at a banquet thrown at a banquet thrown by Winston Churchill's mom at the Manhattan Club in New York City is not true. According to the book Valentine's Manual of New York, the drink was more likely invented by a bartender in Manhattan in the 1860s.
9. People also argue about how the martini got its name, so I'm going to leave you with two options, although you can feel free to argue for other versions in the comments. Let's leave out the possibility that multiple people decided to mix the same two simple ingredients together at the same time, because you know, that was impossible. One, the martini was invented by a bartender in the town of Martinez, California, who named it after the town. Or two, the martini comes from the name Martinez, a cocktail invented by the write of the book The Bartender's Guide, or The Bon Vivant's Companion. Bartender Jerry Thomas, whom, you will soon learn, invented half of the drinks that we know today, wrote the recipe book in 1887, and it contains the famous gin-vermouth combination that makes a martini.
10. Surprisingly, the Alabama Slammer was named for its place of invention - it was created at the University of Alabama in 1975. As for the slamming, well... [Let's Make a Drink! - Alabama Slammer] We've got whiskey, vodka, and then amaretto. Ugh. And, most importantly, healthy dose of orange juice - that's what makes it good for you!
11. Possible martini inventor Jerry Thomas almost definitely invented the Tom Collins. The drink is named after a popular hoax from the 1870s, that is not as funny today as it was then, but I am going to explain it to you anyway. Okay, so person A walks up to Person B, and says, "Have you seen Tom Collins?", and person B says, "I don't even know a Tom Collins." At which point, Person A is like, "But Tom Collins was just here, and he was talking smack about you!" And then Person B is confused, and humor ensues. And then the Three Stooges hit each other in the eyes, and everyone laughs. It's great stuff.
12. By the way, that same Jerry Thomas tried, and then failed, to take credit for the Tom and Jerry. The drink, which consists of eggnog, brandy, and rum, was actually invented by Pierce Egan. Egan was a British writer in the 1920s, who wrote a book called Life in London that starred two characters named Tom and Jerry. He then invented the cocktail as like a publicity scheme! Speaking of which, I will now show you how to make a delicious Hazel and Augustus. [Let's Make a Drink! - Hazel and Augustus] You want your finest Bichon Frise coffee mug, you want the best champagne that the entire gas station has to offer, and the mystery liquor inside Eugenia Price's Beauty from Ashes. Opa! Mostly champa... uh-oh! And then just a little bit of mystery liquor. And drink. [coughs]
13. The Irish Car Bomb is named for the Irish liquors that it is made out of, and the fact that it is taken as a bomb shot. But don't let the name fool you - the drink was invented in the late 1970s in Connecticut. The drink references Irish Republican Army car bombings and probably needs a new name. Regardless, here's how you make it. [Let's Make a Drink! - Irish Car Bomb] All right, you pour yourself a glass of Guinness, then you need your Yoda shot glass. Half a shot of Irish whiskey, half a shot of Irish cream... and - boom! Oh my goodness! This is where you would chug it, but I'm going to make a different choice.
14. Irish coffee, on the other hand, was invented in Ireland. In the 1940s, a bartender at an airport restaurant put Irish whiskey in the coffee of some passenger in order to warm them up after a rough flight through bad conditions; when one passenger asked if he'd been drinking Brazilian coffee, the bartender answered, "No, this is Irish coffee!" By the way, alcohol does not make you warmer. It makes you feel warmer, but it actually lowers your body temperature!
15. Stories about mojitos vary, but the Cuban drink's probably either a reference to mojo, a seasoning that's used in Cuba, or majado - "wet".
16. The Tahitian for "good" gave us Mai Tai, although the beverage was actually invented in California, and maita'i is actually one word in Tahitian.
17. The Bellini, which is made with Prosecco and peach puree, was invented by Italian bartender Giuseppe Cipriani. In the late 1940s, he ran Harry's Bar in Venice, and invented the popular cocktail. He named it for the artist Giovanni Bellini due to a similar in the drink's color and the color used in one of Bellini's paintings.
18. Daiquiri is a town in Cuba, where Jennings Cox invented the drink in the 1890s.
19. Cox, by the way, was an engineer, as were the people who put vodka into cans of orange juice in the 1950s, mixing the two using screwdrivers, which is how that drink got its name.
20. The hurricane was invented at Pat O'Brien's Bar in New Orleans. The bar owner was desperate to get rid of some unwanted rum - and who isn't these days? - so he mixed the drink up and served it in glasses shaped like hurricane lamps. He gave the drink away for free at first, but it got pretty popular in New Orleans.
21. The Minty Grasshopper was also invented in New Orleans. It's called that because it's green.
22. Another drink named for a natural phenomenon containing its color is the mimosa, an orange flower that can be found in Mexico and South America. How do you make it? It's not hard! [Let's Make a Drink! - Mimosa] Take your champagne bottle from your Hazel and Augustus, and orange juice... perfect!
23. The Long Island Iced Tea is either named for a community in Tennessee called Long Island, where a man invented the drink in the 1920s, or the regular Long Island that we all know about. Either way, classy towns for a classy drink.
24. Now, one of my enduring ambitions is to have a famous cocktail named after me, but the problem is, that often history forgets who the cocktail was named for! Great example - the Bloody Mary, which is named either for Mary Tudor, actress Mary Pickford, of a bartender's perpetually laid girlfriend. It also may come from the Bucket of Blood club in Chicago. A hot spot in the 1920s.
25. The Zombie was also invented in California, by the same bartender who was responsible for the Tiki Bar craze that started in the mid-1930s. So thanks for that. The zombie was invented as a hangover cure in the "hair of the dog" kind of way, with the idea being that it would snap you out of the zombie-like hangover state. Mark, make me a zombie!
26. Finally, a Sidecar was first mixed up for an American army officer during World War I - the drink was supposedly named after a motorcycle sidecar, because that's how the officer got around.
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