Where was the Bloody Mary invented? And what about James Bond’s favourite cocktail, or the Singapore Sling?
- Harry’s Bar in Paris and the Regis New York both claim the Bloody Mary; Raffles Singapore claims the Singapore Sling, but this too has been disputed
- With witnesses to their creation long dead, and recipes that have been adapted, it is difficult to resolve these arguments. Just say chin chin! and drink up
Take one part heritage hotel, one part fabled bar, add a dash of controversy, then stir and you have the recipe behind some classic cocktails.
In December, Harry’s Bar in Paris celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Bloody Mary it claims a former barman there, Fernand Petiot, created in 1921. The St Regis New York hotel also claims the Bloody Mary – poured, it says, at its King Cole bar by the very same Petiot, but in 1934.
According to the St Regis, the story goes like this: “In 1934, famed barman Fernand Petiot perfected the recipe for a vodka and tomato juice cocktail, known as the Bloody Mary, at The St Regis New York’s King Cole Bar. Originally christened the Bloody Mary, the cocktail was renamed the Red Snapper so as not to offend the hotel’s refined clientele.”
Note the word “perfected”. The well respected drinks resource Difford’s Guide elaborates: “It appears [Petiot] simply spiced up an existing and well-established combo of vodka and tomato juice while working at the St Regis Hotel, New York City.” Difford’s attributes the creation instead to Hollywood actor George Jessel, in 1927.
Jessel is said to have created the concoction in desperation while hung over; a similar theory concerns the origin of another cocktail, the Singapore Sling, of which more later.
That’s the thing about cocktails – with the protagonists and witnesses long gone, their origins are cloudy, allowing many differing versions of events to emerge. And often the recipes have been thought up, or adapted, by several people.
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Nevertheless, affirms the St Regis: “After more than 80 years, the iconic Bloody Mary remains the signature cocktail of the St Regis.” So much so that every St Regis hotel around the world offers a version of the drink, each one coming with a “twist” conferred by incorporating local ingredients.
The St Regis Hong Kong, for example, has The Canto Mary on the menu, which includes tangerine peel, soy sauce and Chinese five spice. At the St Regis in Zhuhai, southern China, The Pearly May includes oyster sauce and plum wine.
The Lang Mary, at the St Regis Langkawi, in Malaysia, has pandan, tamarind and lemongrass, while The Shogun Mary, at the St Regis Osaka, contains yuzu and wasabi.
The Raffles Singapore hotel claims the Singapore Sling was invented at its famed Long Bar. The drink is a concoction of gin, cherry brandy, Cointreau, Benedictine, pineapple juice, lime juice, grenadine and bitters.
The hotel’s resident historian, Leslie Danker, is certain the Singapore Sling was created by Raffles bartender Ngiam Tong Boon in 1915.
“The management staff working at the hotel prior to the restoration in 1991 carried out extensive research on the origins of the Singapore Sling,” he told me in 2015, when the hotel celebrated the cocktail’s 100th anniversary.
“They went through all the hotel records they could locate and found no mentions of the Singapore Sling prior to the year 1915. It was therefore estimated that the cocktail was created in 1915.”
Not everyone agrees, however. Cocktail historian David Wondrich found newspaper references to gin slings in Singapore back in 1897. He also sourced a story from the Singapore Weekly Sun in 1913 that mentions a group of men at the Cricket Club ordering red slings – a hangover cure, usually gin with sugar and bitters.
The newspaper, Wondrich has said, reported that the bartender refused, so the men ordered a shot of gin, a shot of cherry brandy, a shot of DOM Benedictine, soda water and limes and mixed it themselves.
Raffles Singapore has nevertheless embraced the cocktail, serving it to guests as they check in, and some of the brand’s other hotels offer their own versions, again with a local twist. At Raffles Makati, Manila the Makati Sling includes local pineapple juice and cherry blossom syrup, and at Raffles Jakarta, the eponymously named sling includes star anise and Sumatran passion fruit.
Many other classic cocktails have opaque origins. The Sidecar is variously said to have been created at the Ritz Hotel and at Harry’s Bar, both in Paris. The Martini’s claimants include The Knickerbocker hotel, in New York (originally opened in 1906, the hotel reopened in 2015), and The Occidental San Francisco (lost to the 1906 earthquake).
Author Ian Fleming had his fictional character James Bond invent the Vesper Martini – involving both gin and vodka; shaken not stirred – in the book Casino Royale (1953).
Dukes hotel, in London, is largely credited with the creation of the Vesper since Fleming regularly drank at the bar there. However, he also frequented the American Bar at The Savoy, and one source believes the cocktail was created closer to home.
Historian and author Tyne O’Connell has said that her father, a drinking friend of Fleming, believed the author created the cocktail himself, in his own bachelor pad at the St James’s Club – now also a hotel – a lemon peel’s throw from Dukes.
Who can tell for sure? The only certainty is that where there’s a cocktail, there’s a controversy. Chin chin!
