The Bloody Mary, one of the most famous cocktails in the world, is a drink with great defenders and great detractors. You either love it or you just don't go for the flavors of tomato, lemon, spices and alcohol.
Origin of Bloody Mary
There are different versions of the origins of Bloody Mary, but everything indicates that it was in the mid-1920s to 1930s. Fernand "Pete" Petiot is credited with the first Bloody Mary recipe.
Petiot was a bartender who worked at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in the 1920s, a time when Russians were fleeing the revolution, Americans were fleeing prohibition, and everyone was converging on Paris.
It was in that place where Ernest Hemingway and other American and Russian immigrants met and they brought vodka and caviar with them. It seems that Petiot began to experiment with vodka, which was unfamiliar to him and, for his taste, a tasteless liquor, but which his Russian clients demanded.
American emigrants, among many other things, brought canned tomato juice, which in the dry days of Prohibition was called "tomato juice cocktail" on menus.
One day, he mixed equal parts tomato juice with vodka and seasoned it with pepper and salt. It was originally called Bucket of Blood, named by the American artist Roy Barton in honor of a Chicago nightclub of the same name. The drink was so popular among Americans that in 1933, Vincent Astor asked Petiot to take over the King Cole bar at the St. Régis hotel in New York.
Petiot became one of New York's most popular bartenders, presiding over the King Cole Bar at the Hotel Régis until his retirement in 1966.
Other bars in the city began calling it "Bloody Mary" , in reference to Mary Tudor, Mary I of England and Ireland, known for her bloody reign against the Protestants.
American actor George Jessel also claimed to have invented the Bloody Mary in Palm Beach in 1927. He needed something to drink to overcome a terrible hangover when a bartender suggested vodka. Jessel says he mixed it with tomato juice, lemon and Worcestershire sauce to mitigate the smell of alcohol, and called it Bloody Mary after Lady Mary Brown Warburton went to take a sip and spilled it on her white dress. According to Jessel's autobiography, she laughed and said, "Now you can call me Bloody Mary, George!"
Bloody Mary Ingredients
Despite the variations and creativity, there are seven ingredients to a traditional Bloody Mary, according to Bartels, the seven ingredients I associate with Petiot and the King Cole Bar.
These would be vodka , Worcestershire sauce, tomato juice, black pepper, celery salt, Tabasco, and lemon juice. Swap the vodka for tequila and you have a Bloody Maria. Do you prefer gin ? Just call him Red Snapper. The addition of clam juice gives you Canada's Caesar, and the beef broth makes it a Bloody Bull. But if you want the original, stick with the original seven ingredients.
Smirnoff , Russian vodka made in Moscow by Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov. It has always been associated with the Bloody Mary cocktail. It was the Russian emigrant Rudolph Kunnetchansky who had previously bought the rights to the Boody Mary recipe and the Smirnoff name from Pyotr Smirnov who brought the brand to the United States and in 1939 an advertising campaign was created to promote said vodka. In this campaign, reference was made to it being the main ingredient of the famous cocktail.
The brand was later purchased by Heublein Imports and in the 1950s and early 1960s, Heublein spent millions of dollars promoting cocktails made with its vodka , in print advertisements in national publications such as 'Playboy'.
In 1956, popular actor George Jessel appeared in national advertisements for Smirnoff 's Bloody Mary, claiming that he was the creator of the drink. Because Jessel was popular, the drink's status became fashionable.
Garrison
While the Bloody Mary garnish has taken on entirely new proportions, the traditional celery stalk garnish is attributed to Chicago's famous Pump Room.
The story goes that in 1970, a waiter was looking for a straw for a Bloody Mary, and when he couldn't find it, he saw a stalk of celery, and used it instead. The next thing we know is that its acceptance was such that it has become the iconic image of the drink.