The Development of the Cocktail

It’s well documented that mixed drinks have been around since at least the 1700s – punch came to the UK from India via sailors from the British East India Company (the Sanskrit word ‘panch’, meaning ‘five’, represents the five elements of the drink: alcohol; water; sugar; citrus and spice) – the ‘cocktail’ officially came much later. Its exact origins are still debated, but it is fairly widely recognized that the first mention of the term appeared in a newspaper in Vermont in 1803, while the man often described as the father of bartending, ‘Professor’ Jerry Thomas, wrote the world’s first book containing cocktail recipes The Bartender’s Guide: How to Mix Drinks in 1862.