Italiano
Fancy a cocktail?
And fancy to know where the name cocktail come from? Well, there are several theories….
Who says it is about the custom of colonial-era American innkeepers to mix spirits leftovers (tailings) into one casket and then sell it at cheaper price (the cock, as weird it may sound, was the name of the cask tap).
Or maybe a drug store’s owner in Louisiana, who used to mix drinks made of spirits, water and bitter in a eggcup, which in French is called coqueterie, a loanword, soon altered in Cocktail.
In the XIX century the English travellers in the States were horrified at how their transatlantic cousins mixed fine gin with other liquids. They used to call (contemptuously) said experiments with the same name given to pleasant women with questionable ethics, cocktails.
Finally, David Wondrich, an historian passionate about the topic, gives us his version, which isn’t very romantic for sure: it comes from the habit the horse traders had, to put ginger (or pepper) inside the horse rectal orifice, in order to make the animal raise up (cocking) his tail, making him look more… peppy!
Anyway, here you have a picture of the cocktail station made by Inox Bim.
Which is way more appropriate that any picture of horses with some spice up their anus.
