What does a thirsty robber baron reach for after a hard day racking up millions in the market? Cocktails of course! J. Pierpont Morgan liked to settle in with a Manhattan. William Vanderbilt and Wall Street tycoon James R. Keene each fancied a Vermouth Cocktail. As late 19th-century America was making dramatic advances in manufacturing, industrial capacity, transportation, finance, and communications, it was also making news in the emerging field of mixology and the bartending arts.
During the Gilded Age—the years between the Civil War and the turn of the century—a proliferation of new cocktails ushered in a new breed of celebrity: the bartender. Meanwhile, trendier metropolises such as New York, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, and San Francisco jockeyed for prominence in the liquid arts. Join author and cocktail historian Philip Greene in a spirited discussion of the cocktails of the Gilded Age and sample four delicious cocktails of the era.
Greene is author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion and The Manhattan: The Story of the First Modern Cocktail.
