January 1, 2015 • 50 mins
Join Josh and Chuck live from Vancouver as they dive in to the ins and outs of one of the oldest businesses in the world - the bar! Learn about the history of bars, cocktails and the good people who put them together in new and amazing ways.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Lives and by
fogs hany stander planning? Oh yeah, bad's the good stuff?
(00:33):
Can qua rap for everyone? Alright? Good man? Yeah, I
have to say alcohol makes a difference in the energy level,
a huge difference. Popcorn popcorn and diet coke just does
not cut it. Now. Uh So we're here today, hanging out,
(00:56):
just doing our thing, and I have a question for you.
All right, Chuck, have you ever been to a bar? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
I know you have. That was this set up? Um?
Did you realize though, that while you were at this bar,
(01:17):
you were in one of the oldest businesses known to
human kind? The oldest profession. No, not the oldest profession.
This is the oldest business known to human kind. One
of bars have been around a very long time, they have,
but not as long, it turns out, as alcohol does
anybody who's listening to our How Beer Works episode. It's
(01:41):
entirely possible that bread was invented as a starter for beer,
which is pretty awesome. I mean, that makes humanity as
a whole, like a pretty awesome species. Um. The thing was,
booze was around for a very long time before bars,
So there wasn't a place where you just went to
(02:02):
go drink. You just drank everywhere you went pretty much. Yeah.
You literally like you could drink at work, you could
drink at school. There would be meetings and civic meetings.
You would drink there. But there wasn't an establishment with
four walls set up just for drinking at this point, right,
You would drink it like this Saturday night ritual sacrifice
or something like yeah, as you do. Yeah. And so
(02:25):
the first bars then that really kind of pop up
are around the turn of not this past millennia, but
the one before. And you can find them in Italy
in a place called Pompeii. And these aren't necessarily the
oldest bars in the world, but they are one of
the earliest established bars. And they were basically, um, hot
snack bars. They're called it sounds gross there, it does
(02:49):
hot snacks. Hot snacks. Yeah. Well it's like you know,
chicken wings or poutine is a hot snack. That's a
hot snack. That's the hottest snack. That's yeah, because they
took a hot snack and then poured hot gravy. And
what is a cheese that's hot? Right? That's hot? Uh?
(03:10):
You know this was more like I imagine hot olives hot.
I don't know, hot tomatoes. The point is that there
was there was wine at these places, right. And actually,
if you've ever been to Bombay Pompeii um as I have,
you can see these places. They're like bars or countertops
with holes cut out, and they put like jugs of olives,
(03:31):
poutine and wine and stuff. And you would go down
to this this area and hang out and drink and
hang out with your neighbors. And sure like, look at
malt pvesuvius over there. It isn't it lovely? I think
it's ever gonna do it that. We're good. Don't be ridiculous.
You were drunk. So again, the an't these are the
(03:53):
earliest bars, but they're among the earliest um. And the
Romans were really kind of big with bars. In home itself,
there were lots of bars like there were in vesuvious Um.
But the Romans also did something else that led to
the spread of bars, and they built roads. Well, first
of all, they conquered the world and then they built roads,
(04:14):
and along these roads there were inns for travelers, and
in the ends there were bars. Yeah, because if you
were tradesman on a Roman road that it was scary
at night you might get mugged and killed. So they
would do their trading and traveling during the day and
then they would stay in these ends at night. And
just like modern American business travelers, what else do you
(04:34):
do when you're on the road like that, You got
to the hotel bar and you drink your face off.
And that's what the tradesmen did in ancient Rome. You
celebrate not getting murdered that day on the Roman road.
I traded some spices, I didn't get killed, So bring
them the gropp up exactly. And um, so out of
this came the taverns, the ends, the pubs, like they
(04:55):
basically said, that's great, you've gotten in, but we've got
a little town and we could use a couple more,
but we don't need in, so let's just stick to
the to the bar part those are, that's how those
evolved out of there. But um, the oldest bar in
the world probably it's definitely the oldest bar in Ireland,
but it could possibly be Guinnesses investigating as we speak
(05:19):
to the oldest bar in the world right now. Um,
it's called Shawn's. Has anyone ever heard of Shawn's in Athlone, Ireland.
You've been there, it sounds pretty neat. He's part of it.
That's enough to cheer. Um it was. It was founded
in a nine d c and actual, real live, no joke.
(05:39):
Vikings used to get wasted there and this place is
still around, Like you can go get wasted where the
Vikings got wasted, which is pretty amazing. I guess they
would They would eat mushrooms and then kill people all
the way. They would go berserk, remember that. So the
coolest thing about Shawn's actually is, um, it predates the
(06:01):
town that it's in now. It used to be for
two hundred and fifty years just Shawn's Bar and this
old Roman road. And apparently people got tired of like
having to drive home after getting wasted at shawn so
they just built their houses around it. And that's where
the town of athlo And, Ireland came from. That's true,
and uh, it's interesting fact. That's not true. Interesting fact
(06:27):
about Shawn's Bar. In nineteen seven it was owned by
boy George. Yeah, the boy George, not the one you
were thinking of. Boy George. Yeah, I guess you. I
don't know. He thought it was a safe investment. It
had been there for you know that many years. But
he got out of it. He's like, nah, I think
(06:48):
he went broke. Someone in the first show said he
went broke. It's well, that's mean, yeah, but it could
be true. Yeah, I think it's true. So we did
a little research on your town and we were very
pleasantly surprised to find that, you know, your town was
founded on a bar, right, y'all know that gassy Jack.
(07:11):
That's right, Gassie Jack. Within twenty four hours of landing
and founding gas Town, Gassy Jack built a bar. That's
the first thing he did. He's like, I'm gonna have
a town. He woke up the next day. I went,
I'm gonna build a bar. Yeah. And he built the globe,
which is not there. It's it's It was at the
corner of Walter and Carroll Streets. I think in Gastown
(07:34):
a water live corrections, so water and Carol. Hey, I said, Carol, right,
come on, give me some points there. Well, the way
I look at it is we just say that these
people from having the email us right, it's Walter. This
is actually kind of efficient. Yeah, this is cool. Should
just do every show live. So there's there's a there's
(07:56):
a statue of Gassy Jack and um, and we think
very highly of him because of the fact that he
built a bar. But he did things back and we
found out it's not gassy like you think that it
was gassy because it was talkative. Did you guys know
that boring? Yeah? I was all pumped up. I was like,
(08:20):
this guy farted a lot and it's like, just let
that name. He was clearly proud of it because he
let them erect a statue that says gassy Jay. It
was just because he talked a lot. And they do
have a statue there right, Yeah, at Water and Carroll Streets.
So Vancouver itself would have older bars than it does
(08:42):
if like Atlanta where we're from. Uh, it hadn't burned down.
Uh And what was that eighty six? Quickly rebuilt of
course because you're a strong city. But um, in Victoria
we have the six Mile Pub eighty six not too shabby,
not to ship and Garrick said, pub also in Victoria
(09:02):
eighteen sixty seven, except that it's not bad as far
as old as drinking establishments go. No. But uh, guessie
Jack kind of thwarted convention by building the bar first
and then the hotel because that whole tradition of having
a bar in a hotel survived long past the Roman Roads. Yes,
(09:23):
there were pubs and taverns and everything, but that didn't
mean that there weren't bars in hotels any longer. Um,
and that made its way over to the New world,
which is here, that's all of us, and and along
the way. One of the reasons why this whole custom
and and um tradition made its way over was because
(09:43):
you could make a lot of money being a bartender
because you probably owned the bar, you probably owned the
end that the bar was in, and you're probably making
the booze that you were selling, so you were just
making bank. So they the bartenders actually were a among
the wealthiest of the socioeconomics states. Yeah, they were, you know,
(10:05):
the upper tier of society exactly. Uh, in America, we
have the same thing, like Josha. We had ends that
had the bars. But then in eighteen thirty two, the U. S.
Congress said, you know what, let's pass a law. Let's
call it the pioneer in in Tavern law, And let's
just say you don't have to stay in the hotel
to get drunk there. You can just come in, get
(10:27):
south and get on your horse and and crash it
on the way home. I guess somebody just clapped for
the pioneer in in Tavern. Liley. Yes, we won't stay here, right,
But it was a cool on and it changed everything
because all of a sudden you could just have a
bar in a place where you can just go drink. Yeah.
And the industrial age changed everything too, because place like
(10:50):
say New York City became this this beacon for immigrants
to come to and and be skilled laborers and working factories.
And they brought with them their love of of bars,
and they said, what the hell is going on with
this town? Like where are all your bars? We want
to bar here? Bar there, Bar there, bar there? We
want to bar there? Where are all your bars? We
know how to make whiskey too, which exactly like like
(11:12):
just leave it to us, we'll open the bars. Um.
And very quickly bars sprouted in neighborhoods and became customary,
like pretty much overnight in the United States. Yeah, and
they were because sort of like they are now in
like the best towns are the center of civic life.
There were where people congregated. It was the center of politics.
(11:33):
In fact, back in the day, it was untoward to
actually have legitimate advertisements and political campaigns. That was no good.
What you could do is get everyone loaded on election day.
And they even had a name for it, which was
swilling the planters with bumbo, and bumbo was a rum
and the planters were the voters. The voters and basically
(11:56):
whoever got the most people drunk on election day one
like almost literally that's the case, Yeah, which is pretty solid. George,
George Washington, who's the father of our country. He uh,
he made his first bid for the Virginia Legislature and
lost because he didn't he didn't cotton to that kind
of thing. Didn't swill the planners with bumbo. No, he
(12:18):
did not. And he learned his lesson because the next
time he ran for the legislature, he spent something like
eighty percent of his entire campaign fund on booze on
election day and he won big time. He figured it out,
that's right, and uh, to this day, well, it became
rife with corruption. Of course, anytime you're getting people drunk
to vote for you, eventually they're gonna evolve as a
(12:42):
nation and say, yeah, no, maybe that sounds such a
good idea, So let's outlaw drinking on election day altogether.
And for many years that was the case. And in
a couple of states, South Carolina and Kentucky in America,
they still won't let you drink on election day. Yeah,
the bars were closed, which is weird and archaic. And
it's on a Tuesday, which is strange. But they have
(13:03):
like really efficient quick elections just over and everybody's like,
let's get this over with. The bars are closed, this
is awful. Yes, you're elected, they do. They're drinking at home.
I think on election day probably we'll be back to
stuff you should know. Live in Vancouver, right, Josh, right,
hold your horses, everybody, you know, buddy. I was just
(13:25):
hanging out with my very cool nephew over the holidays
and he is a budding photographer and he showed me
his website and I said, that looks like a Squarespace
website and he said, uncle Chuck, it is awesome, and
it looked great. Man, It's dragon drop. It's intuitive. Uh,
you don't need to learn how to code. He has
a great time with it. He's showing off his pictures
and getting business. Yeah. Well, Plus, if you're cool Nephew
(13:47):
gets into any troubles, he can contact. Squarespaces excellent customer support.
They have email support and live chat twenty four hours
a day, seven days a week. Yeah. And if you
need a logo for your company, don't spend a ton
of money. They have an easy logo creator and you
can get a really quality logo for your website at
squarespace dot com slash logo. Plus, all plants have commerce options,
(14:08):
so from hosting an entire story to accepting donations for
your personal blog. It's right there for you. Yeah, and
it's gonna look good on every device from your laptop
to your tablet to your mobile phone. And folks, we
got a deal for you. You can try the product
risk free just by going to www dot squarespace dot
com slash stuff. You're gonna get a fourteen day trial
with no credit card necessary, and if you like it,
(14:31):
it's only eight bucks a month after that, including a
free domain name if you sign up for a year
and without offer code stuff Josh. You can also get
ten percent off your first purchase, so take our word
for it. Get a free fourteen day trial with no
credit card necessary. Just head on over to squarespace dot
com slash stuff. Uh, so we're in New York City.
(14:51):
Let's getting the way back machine. We bought a full
size way back machine so we can. Oh, I gotta
go back to New York City. It's eighteen twenty and
the first celebrity bartender is uh, well, he's not born
because he's old by that point. But his name was
(15:12):
Erasmus Willard, and he worked at the City Hotel in
New York and he was famous. He had two really
meat traits that turns out to be a celebrity bartender.
He's ambidextrous, and he had a photographic memory, so he
could make drinks with both hands and recognize your face
as you're coming in the door and be making your
drink with one hand and recognize his face and then
we say his Because only men were allowed in bars
(15:34):
at this point, by the way, it's right, ladies, it
gets better, it gets better, get better with us. Eventually
women could go to bars. I don't know if you
knew that. So Harasmus Willard was the first dude, and
he sort of paved the way. He was known as
the best known man in the city, and he paid
the way for Josh's hero, my hero Jerry Thomas. Yeah,
(15:58):
come on, give it up for Cheritos. So Jerry Thomas
like that guy. Yeah, everybody's like, you can tell us
more about him? Why is it your hero? Later? Explain?
They're always asking us to explain. Um, Jerry Thomas was
this dude who was flamboyant. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to
(16:22):
say he had a little little liberace and um, you know,
definitely he would tend very flashy. He would tend bar
with like diamond rings on both hands, diamond stickpin and
his tie. Uh literally a rat on each shoulder while
he's tending bar. And this guy rats and this guy
(16:43):
his signature drink was called the Blue Blazer, which was
Scotch and I think a little bit of sugar and
some water, but you would pour it from wine glass
to wineglass on fire with rats on your shoulders and
diamonds sparkling in the flames and like this is Erry Thomas,
which is pretty awesome. Like that in and of itself
warrants mentioned, you know, hundred and fifty years later. But
(17:08):
he also had the brains and the creativity to back
it up. And basically, in Jerry Thomas, you have everything
that we know about cocktails and drinking and going to
a bar in this one dude's person. Yeah. He you know,
he Barten in New York for a while, had his
own place, and then the Civil War started and he
was like, I don't like all this killing of each
(17:30):
other's thing, So I'm gonna go out west and do
my thing out there for a while. And you teld
me when that Civil war is over, and I'll come
back to New York. But you did. He spent some
time out west, and yeah, and Saloons, I guess, applying
as trade and that's right West Coast, and uh, that
is a place you just got pandered to. The West
(17:52):
Coast is a thing, and that's right West Coast. Good job,
and that what they do that works? I think that's
East Side. I thought it was this early on. I
was so bad at it. This is this is West Coast, clearly, right.
(18:18):
So he goes back to New York and he says, uh,
you know what, I'm gonna write a book I'm gonna
I'm gonna spread the joy of my craft. It's gonna
take like everything that he's learned through his travels, all
the inventions he made, and puts it into a book. Yeah,
all the way back in eighteen sixty two. It's really
the first bartenders guide ever. Uh, you should do the
honors here because it's the greatest book title. Well, there's
(18:39):
three titles. It's called The Bartender's Guide, or How to
Mix Drinks or the bomba Bants Companion. I like companion,
that's for sure, especially when you're like wearing diamonds on
both hands and rats on your shoulders. It's the bomb
of Ants Companion. So he had a lot of flash,
(19:00):
we said, and not necessarily, Uh, the other bartenders that
followed in his footups footsteps didn't really necessarily go that far.
But what he did do was he provided craftsmanship and
artisanship to bartending for the first time, and he was
the first guy to really So you know, you should
take pride in what you're doing here and making a
good drink. Yeah, and dress up. We'll kill you to
(19:21):
dress up a little bit, but I kill you to
put a rat on your shoulder for once. So they
don't bite much. Uh so, well, and we'll talk a
little more about Jerry Thomas and what he did. But
while he's working, this is like the boon the hey Day,
the initial boon of drinking. Basically before then everybody drank
(19:42):
and they drank all the time. But this is like
going and getting a drink was a cool thing. You know,
it's legit. But if you listen closely, while Jerry Thomas
is mixing his blue Blazer, there's a drumbeat in the background,
and if you listen, it sounds really like stupid and
wrong minded, and and if you really focus it on it,
(20:04):
you realize it's the drum beat of the temperance movement,
which managed to get prohibition passed, not just a hard country,
but in your country. Yes, let's all booth the Temperance movement.
What a bad idea. And the Canadians knew it was
a bad idea way before we did, because you had
prohibition for a very short time, and this sucks. It's
(20:27):
just stupid with you had it for a couple of
years during wartime from I think nine and nineteen twenty.
It was provincial otherwise, but you had a very nice
Canadian loophole. If you have an ailment, you could get booze.
You could go to even during prohibition, you could go
to the doctor and say, Doc, I got I got
the I got the shapes, I got the shakes. I
need's the booze bad? I got the I got the six,
(20:50):
I got the I got the cold, I got the
Jimmy lings. I'm awake, Doc, I'm awake, Just give me
some foods. And then Doc would be like, yeah, you
had to. Day was a boost and uh in Ontario
in one year in anyone have a guest on how
many prescriptions for booze just in Ontario? Everyone? Where do
(21:12):
you want? What do you say? Four hundred thousand? No, double,
it's eight hundred and ten thousand. People were so sick
that they needed both in one year, just in Ontario.
So we were really impressed by that number. So, as
as is our usual want, we went and looked at
the Canadian Census and we found that eight hundred and
(21:36):
ten thousand, the number of prescriptions in that one year
in Ontario alone, was one tenth the entire population of Canada.
And we're like, wow, the numbers really head up. Canada
is pretty cool like that's when it really broke on us.
We're like, all right, you were a very sickly people.
(21:59):
We needed build better. Uh. And it is funny to
see a play out all these years later with the
marijuana clinics. It's like, it's the same thing. I got
the sis, I'm awake, I got the shakes. Oh you
need some marijuana. I don't eat enough. You have the
neuropaths here right, Like you can just walk in and
(22:20):
and talk to a dude, a neuropath, and they'll say, oh, well,
you clearly need some marijuana. So this is a very
dark time, not only for bartending as a craft because
it was just sorting to become like a legitimate thing
and respectable thing, but for booze period. Prohibition was bad
because there were a lot of bars, but they just
(22:40):
weren't legal. I think they were twice the number of
prohibition pars that there were legal bars. Yeah. There in
the US there were thirty thousand speakeasies, which was twice
the number of legally licensed bars before prohibition was clearly working.
So clearly prohibition was just a great idea all around,
(23:01):
because the mob was like, yes, come here, we can
take care of you just look for the green door
and you'll find a speakeasy. Yeah, and uh it was
bad for bartending though, because whoever the bartender was was
who was the guy who could get the booze, and
who could get the booze didn't necessarily know anything about booze,
for one, or making good drinks, and it wasn't necessarily
(23:21):
good booze. Like it would literally kill you or or
um strike you blind. You heard the saying abot this
will make it go blind. It's really made people go blind,
like to a lot of people. That's where the phrase
comes from. There was there was a batch of industrial
alcohol that I guess the US government thought was going
to fall into the hands of bootleggers, which it did. Um,
(23:44):
so they decided to poison it and a lot of
people died, and the American government was like and like
walked away. It's not it's not very much talked about.
We found out about it, so we're like telling everybody
is that is messed up? But I think in uh,
what is it chuck alone? People died from bad liquor,
(24:08):
and that's not including people who are paralyzed or struggle. Yeah,
what that means actually just occurred to me. That means
twenty five thousand people died, and twenty five thousand more
people were still like, I'm gonna give it a shot,
all right, what are the chances, you know, anything to
take care of the jimmy legs? Yeah, I got the shakes.
So the other cool thing about prohibition is since all
(24:29):
the rules are out the door, basically women said I'm
going to a bar and you're not gonna stop me.
I've come a long way, baby, So women were now
congregating in bars, and men all of a sudden went,
this is great. I don't know why we never allowed
women in here, because we've just been getting drunk by
(24:50):
ourselves and sort of looking at each other and going
home at the end of the night. And that's sort
of weird, which, which, as we'll get to, eventually became
a tradition at bars. That's right, call me home alone.
But at least there were women now and they were
getting south right along with the guys. Right. Great, But
it was because there weren't any rules. It was like
(25:10):
a speakeasy was operating illegally. So a woman would come
to the door and be like, what are you gonna
not let me in, you know, like you're not even
supposed to be serving booze anyway. Yeah, and there's another
unbelievable fact here that Josh dug up that I still
take issue with. Apparently, up until the nineteen eighties and Alberta,
where is that that way? This way? Is that? Easter's
(25:35):
that way? Apparently in Alberta they had laws on the
books and up until the nineteen eighties that still were
gender specific with bars. I know, hey, man, we're pretty
telling you guys about it. We didn't create the laws. Well,
I think it might have been. I don't know if
it was in Forest. Surely not, because they had the
sixties in the seventies too, right, catching up toward the eights.
(26:01):
So prohibition happens, right, and um, everybody's like that was
a really bad idea. Let's never do that again, let's
repeal it, and um oh, let's go to war. So
World War two happened, and that actually had a pretty
significant effect on bars too. Apparently up here they sent
all of your guys over to Europe to fight, and
(26:23):
your guys came back and said, there are these pubs
in Europe that are awesome, so let's build them. Everywhere.
And then after that, like, yeah, we got the pubs.
How about some sports bars too, Let's mix those in
a little bit. And that's pretty much how things went
for a while in Canada. In the US, um our
guys apparently all went to the South Pacific and came
(26:44):
back and we're like tiki culture, and tiki was huge
in the United States. Not a fan here. I don't
understand this at all, Like, how do you not like tiki?
There's like fun uh shirts right, All the drinks are good,
very very easty stuff. Uh. The restaurants that you go
to to drink are fun. It's just nice. Yeah, I'm
(27:06):
a pub guy. I don't I don't see why you
have to differentiates anyway. So that's how things were in
the US and Canada until there's a very dark time
that settled over the land. Not as dark as Prohibition,
but pretty close. And this was the age of the
fern bar. Does anyone know what a fern bar is?
(27:28):
Have you ever heard of that? You know, how you
go to Red Robin and there's like tiffany lamps and
like terrible drinks and all that stuff. Well, you can
thank the invention of the fern bar for that, Like,
have you ever seen a Three's company? Remember the Regal
That was a firm bar and in the seventies they
were all the rage. Yeah, there was a guy in
(27:49):
San Francisco and he went by the name of Henry
Africa because that's a super fun name. His real name
was Norman hob Day and he opened his bar Henry
Africa's because Norman hobb Days is this really bad name
for a bar as well. Plus also he apparently all
the time wore safari gear in like a helmet. Yeah,
(28:11):
And so he went by Henry Africa and Jerry Thomas
were sort of similar. I think they were both flamboyant.
One ruined things, one did great things back. So he
opened up Henry Africa's. There was another one in San
Francisco too in the early uh it was a yeah
in the nineteen seventies and name is called Perry's. And
they were like, you know what, let's get rid of
these classy oak dark bars that everyone loves because they're awesome,
(28:36):
and let's put in ferns and tippany lamps and fat
chairs and let's bring the lights up and let's serve
nasty drinks mixed and machines nasty from bags of mixed
chemical flavored things. Yeah, and I have an idea. This
is gonna make us a million bucks. I'm gonna make
a gun that shoots soda, water and orange juice out
(28:56):
of the same thing. And everyone apparently said, it's the
seventies who cares about anything. Let's go this way for
the firm bars. They did, true, and it was the
sexual revolution. So the ladies that were already going to
bars now felt like, Hey, I'm in a bar and
I can be like a more aggressive all of a sudden,
(29:16):
it's a it's the hip happening times. I'm Diane Keaton.
I can That's what they said to themselves. I can
look for Mr Goodbar and uh and and and have
a drink and go meet a man. Uh. I'd like
I'd like to was it was my lady from the
seventies impression. I have to see Mr Goodbar looking searching
(29:38):
for Mr Goodbar, looking for Mr One. Has nobody ever
seen that movie? Oh my god, that was a pity clap.
They don't have Diane Keaton in Canada. Have you seen it?
I think my threes company references way more well received better,
But the point is you could bad drinks in these bars,
(30:01):
and it's sort of a dark time for the craft
of bartending. Like the Bahama Mama, the Kama Kazi um,
the sides. Yeah, the Harvey Wallbanger, which apparently was so
popular it had its own mascot. It was like, uh,
basically a drunken version of Ziggy just wandering around and
(30:21):
I guess like you would get a sticker or something
if you ordered a Harvey Wallbanger. This is the level
of thought people were putting into drinks. If you just
sell the drink, you give a sticker out, then that's
that's not a place you want to be in. Especially
Ziggy with like exces for eyes. Pretty much changed my mind.
I think have like one of those inclines coming off
of them is kind of nice. I'll get you one
(30:43):
for Christmas. They have the money bay. So this is
the way things were going for a while, uh, until
this very faithful meeting between this guy named Dale de
Groff and a dude who owned a restaurant and he
wanted to Grof to set up a bar for him.
And he said, you know what, I don't want this
(31:04):
usual firm bar crud. This is awful, this New York City, Like,
we gotta do this, right, Yeah, let's let's get back
to basics. And he tossed Dale de Groff a book,
a very important book. What book, the Bomby Box Companion
from eighteen sixty two. Everything came full circle. Yeah, and
Dale de Groff was like, this is amazing. We can
(31:26):
bring craftsmanship back into bartending. Unlet's use real ingredients. Let's
get rid of these stupid swirly mixing machines and these
bags of chemical fruit flavored things, and let's use real fruit,
because there is such a thing as real fruit, and
we should put it in drinks again, like in the
nineteenth century, right, And that's what they did, and the
(31:46):
bar was saved. So when you go to like the
Cascade Room or the Diamond or I don't know if
you guys have been to Boulevard, I know it's like
pretty new. But if you finally do go and you
enjoy a cocktail there, we did our search, uh, and
I hope that was dead on because we I really
put us out there just then. But if you go
(32:08):
to a place where there's a decent cocktail and somebody's
really putting thought into it, you can thank this Dale
Degrof guy for bringing it all back, but really you
should thank Jerry Thomas to tell you the truth. Now,
do you understand why he's my hero? See? They love
Jerry Thomas. But let's talk a little more about him. Right. So,
like at the bars is, they're evolving and bartenders are evolving.
(32:32):
They're going from diamond studded to you know, just normal um.
Cocktails are evolving too. Like early on, basically everybody made
their own booze and they had it in a jug
with three X is on it and they just turned
it up and that was like their cocktail. It's how
they drank. Yeah, like chuck yeah, based turned the three
(32:54):
X jug out. Um. And then when when Jerry Thomas
came on the scenes, like we can do better than this.
There's some cool ingredients that I want to kind of
mess with and create new stuff. So originally there were punches,
which is a huge bowl of hot booze that everybody
drank from the bumbo that the planners swilled. Right. Then
(33:14):
there was a toddy, which apparently from what I can gather,
it is just like a single serving hot punch, right,
And then there were slings and slings were the ones
that had the most promised. Those became what we understand
now as cocktails. They were basically booze um, a little
bit of water, a little bit of sugar and then
maybe some fruit juice. And Jerry Thomas looks at the
(33:36):
sling and he goes, I can do something with this,
and he creates what's called the Baroque Age of cocktails,
where there's just like this great experimentation going on. Nobody
knows what the hell anybody else is doing, but everybody's
trying new stuff and um. All of these The foundation
for what we know now as cocktails came out of Thera. Yeah,
(33:56):
and the first cocktail was mentioned in print the word
in eighteen o three in Amherst, New Hampshire, with the
slogan it's excellent for the head because it was a
morning drink. It was you were supposed to drink a cocktail.
That's where it comes from, the rooster cocktail, that's where
the word comes from. And if you drank too much
of the night before, you would get up in the
morning and make your little fizzy cocktail drink with bitters,
(34:19):
and it was it's like the hair of the dog
that with some of us know and love. You would
drink your cocktail, get punched in the face by your wife,
pick up your acts, and go back out there and
work another day. That's what they used to do. Jerry
Thomas said, you know what, I love the morning cocktail
as much as anybody else. But why can't we keep
(34:40):
drinking throughout the day? Let me see if I can
mess with this. I save alcoholism for the morning. So
through this Baroque era of drink making, it was very
very nuanced, like you would have like a sour, and
a sour was just booze citrus and a little bit
of sweetener usually maybe be curius how or something like that,
(35:01):
and then you would change that dramatically by adding soda,
and then all of a sudden you had a fizz
or if you wanted to use um booze a little
bit of grenadine I think, or was it curius how
sweetener and um brandy or something, you would have a daisy.
And then in Mexico they added tequila to the daisy,
(35:23):
and in um Spanish daisy is margarita, So that's where
the margarita came from. Around this time, I got some
margarita fans out there. Huh So Jerry Thomas was very influential,
but he was Uh, if you ever pick up a
copy of the Bombay Companion and try and read this thing,
it's it doesn't translate that crate to today's um proportions,
(35:45):
Like what is a glug like literally like three glugs
of this and a pinch of that, and uh, well,
I guess pinches easy enough, but well no, I still
don't understand pinch. I mean, yeah, it makes sense, but
what if you're like, that's that's a lot more than
it's a good point. So it took like cocktail historians,
uh to to kind of read the thing and bring
(36:06):
it into the modern era because back then, sugar came
in a big loaf, and sugar wasn't like refined like
it is today, and ice, you know, was had a
big deal chip it away exactly how you wanted to,
And so it took cocktail historians to really kind of
translate all this stuff right, and they did, and along
the way, Jerry Thomas dies, but he creates his great
(36:27):
body of work that's added to over time, and then
eventually we come to like the streamlined classic cocktails that
we have today. Like the Martini or the Manhattan and
all of this was from the work of these like
wonderful genius people who are like fighting on the front
lines against the temperance movement and making life better for
every hero heroes, real heroes, you know, shirking out of
(36:50):
like the Civil War and all that stuff, just doing
God's work basically. And the Martini. We're gonna talk about
some of these classic cocktails and martini. Uh if anyone
here drinks martinis, it's always any Martini things. I love Martini,
(37:12):
says the guy with the PBR, and it's hand some
Martinis right now. I'm just gonna put these back in
my helmet and drink them from my stall. So the Martini,
if you've ever had a Martini, it's very dependent on
the individual on how exactly you like it. Everyone says
that that they like make the perfect martini, but the
ratio for removed the gin and uh no, no no,
(37:35):
I make the perfect Martini Si. Everyone thinks that make
how do you make it? Okay? I use um two
to three ounces? Okay, I used three o three like
Scotch over three three ounces of gin and half an
ounce of uh stir itt. Some crushed ice because it
(37:55):
gets cold or faster. It's way better strain it. Um. Sometimes,
if you want to get a little crazy and you
want to go original, the Martini is actually supposed to
have orange bitters in it. A couple of dashes of
orange bitters. Yeah, you say what, and it seems weird,
but you don't taste the orange. It just does something
different to it. And then a couple of all of us,
all right, Martin, all of juice, I drinklin journey. Do
(38:17):
you do you really drink your sturdy? Oh yeah, I
like it. It's salty. I don't know. Is that wrong? No? No, no,
that's the thing, Chuck, that's the key. There's you enjoy it.
There's no wrong. Absolutely. But the origins of the Martini
are equally contentious because everyone thinks they invented it. There
was a drink in Martinez, California invented the Martini. There
(38:42):
was a place in California called Martinez, and they in Martinez,
they made a drink called the Martinez and they claimed
that the Martini came out of the Martinez, that they
are the inventors, but they're just one of several. Right,
there's another one that um said, it's just named after
Martini and Rossi, the ver with makers. Does anyone else
make vermouth? Oh? Yeah, there's tons of other women. Why
(39:04):
is that the only one I ever see anywhere? I
guess marketing. Okay, man, it's the worst kind of vermouth too,
Oh is it really? Yeah, like every other vermouth on
the planet is better than Martini and Rossy. And that's
the one that everybody knows is Martini and Rossy. I
feel like a heel. No, no, you're fine, Okay, you're
fine if you enjoy Martini and Rossy, patronize me. I'm
(39:27):
getting you back for that one, dude. The West Coast, Yes,
we're on the West Coast drinking. What about the dacri? Yeah?
The dacari was invented in Cuba by an American who
was there working and mines and was bored and uh
went to a bar and said, you know what, don't
(39:47):
you take some rum and some lime and some sugar
and mix that all up and let's make a drink. Uh,
and let's call it a dacori. And that's how the
decor was born. Yeah. And then the first you know,
but making the rosen you take out of the freezer
and put into a blender and put like a fifth
of romans get wasted. Um, that's the firm bar version.
(40:08):
And your wife punches in. You get your acts and
you gotta work. You can't work in on a blender
full of dacori, believe me. The Tom Collins has an
interesting history. Um, kind of dorky now, but in New
York in the eighteen hundreds, it was a big fun
joke to tell everyone that this guy at Tom Collins
(40:29):
has been talking about you. Yeah, because apparently, like just
going to a bar to drink wasn't amusing enough, Like
they had to jazz it up with hoaxes. You know,
they didn't have ziggy stickers at the time, so there
was no Tom Collins. Of course it was just a
big hoax, but apparently, and it was a big laugh
back then to tell people that. So bartenders got the
idea like, hey, these people come around asking where it's
(40:51):
just Tom Collins. I gotta have a word with him.
So let's make a drink called the Tom Collins. So
when they come in and ask for it, to serve
it to him, and they have to give us money,
easy sail, easy peasy every time. What about um, the
Mohito's anybody here like a mohito. I like a mohito too.
It's good like a mohito. It turns out the mohito
(41:12):
might be the oldest cocktail in the entire world. Yeah,
it's what mint little sweetener. Right, that's a different drink.
Actually it's a mint soda water, some sweetener and uh. Rum.
But originally the reason they put all this stuff because
these are pirates drinking this in the sixteenth century. Um.
(41:35):
And the reason they put all this stuff in was
because the stuff they were drinking was just kind of
like a proto rum called taffia or agua gardie nice. Um.
It tasted so bad that you had to put all
this other stuff into it. Um. And so eventually they
introduced copper stills to Cuba and started making like really
(41:56):
good rum there. But they were like, no, I still
like the it and this sugar. Yeah, this is a
really delicious drink. So that's the mohito drink. Here in Canada,
you have a drink called the Caesar, another popular morning drink,
and uh man, they love the Caesar here a Canada.
(42:20):
I know we had eight this morning. I have been
making those for years, unknowingly calling them bloody Mary's the
whole time I did. My friend taught me a recipe.
He taught me a recipe to had clomato in it,
and it was delicious, and so I was like, well,
this is my bloody mary. It's with clomato. I did
(42:41):
not know it was had a different name. It's I'm
gonna call it a Caesar from now on because it
is delicious. It's pretty good, and I really it's it's
way better with the clomato to me than just regular
tomato drink. It's it's great despite its origins. Apparently, the
guy I think his name is Walter Chell, Yeah, from
the Cold to re in Um. He went to Venice
(43:04):
and tried a spaghetti dish. It was like, I want
to drink that tastes like that, and he came up
with the Caesar, which you guys love, so you love
spaghetti in the glass? A clam dish basically, yeah, what
would be really good in this drink? Clams clamns. Yeah,
it is a good drink. We just um, and then
(43:27):
of course we figure you guys are probably beat us
to death with your shoes if we didn't conclude this
podcast with a lengthy, lengthy discussion on Canadian whiskey, which
you call rye, which we're big fans of actually, and
in in Toronto for the first show that we did, um,
we said we're going to talk about Canadian whiskey, and
(43:48):
everybody went ry and we thought everybody's going why and
we we just like looked at each other, like, oh,
we just lost the crowd. This is not good. Somebody
would I thought they would love this. Yeah. Uh. It
turns out we finally everybody calmed down. One person basically
raised their hand and and addressed you guys for us
(44:10):
and said, everyone's saying rye. We call it ry here,
and we're like, okay, so just disregard the last like
forty five seconds of panic that you saw us go through.
So we understand how you guys call it rye, but
we call it Canadian whiskey. The first distillery here in
Canada was open in Quebec City you may have heard
(44:30):
of in seventeen sixty nine. That was number one, and
then by the eighteen forties there were over two hundred distilleries,
which is not too bad. You guys love making your
whiskey because you had people from Europe in Scotland and
Ireland coming over and saying, we know how to make
this stuff. We know how to spell it without the
e like the rest of those dummies. And that's why
(44:54):
you spell whiskey without the e was because of those immigrants.
And uh, a man named John Molson is credited. It's
starting the first distillery in Canada, whiskey distillery. And and
you're rye is very similar to our Bourbon, except the
process is different. Like both of them have corn, a
lot of corn in them, a lot of malti barley,
(45:15):
and then a little bit of rye. The differences in
Bourbon County, Kentucky where they have the soberest elections in
the country. Um, ironically, ironically, Uh, they take the the
corn and the rye and the barley and they ferment
and distill it and age it together. You guys take
(45:36):
your barley and your corn and your rye and you
make liquor out of them, and then you bring them
together at the end, which is why rye is a
blended whiskey like Scotch. Actually, yeah, apparently the rye part
of it is the smallest grain, the smallest amount of
grain that they use. But it provides the most flavors.
So I guess that's why you call it right and
(45:58):
so um, during the Civil War, our our civil war,
when our our country was torn asunder, you guys were
totally fine. Um, we were busy fighting. We weren't our
forefathers were. Um, the Clarks were killing the Bryant's. Yeah,
I feel really bad. It's all good. So during the
(46:22):
Civil War, during the Civil War, our our distilleries shut down, like,
we're like, we have other things to focus on, um,
but we still need booze. So Canada said, we got
plenty of it here, you guys go. And after the
Civil War, Um, when our distilleries went back online, there
was an enormous amount of competition still because everybody loved
(46:46):
you're rye. You know, we're like, I just got my
leg amputated, give me some more of that stuff. And
you guys were more than happy to oblige, so much
so that the American distillers were like, Congress, we need
you to step in and do something about this. And
Congress did They said any No, it's true, they said,
any any booze that's manufactured outside of the United States
(47:10):
has to have his country of origin on the label.
So in eighteen ninety a very very popular whiskey from
Canada called Club Whiskey became Canadian Club. I'm still around
today because of a law, because of us, because of
our Congress. Thank you, that's right. And uh, Canadian Club
(47:34):
remained super popular still to this day. And in the
nineteen sixties. One of the reasons. One of their cool
little advertising tricks was that had this cool campaign called
hide a Case n sixty seven. They said, Hey, you
know what we'll do. Well, let's appeal to the rich
drunks of the world and let's hide a case of
whiskey in some remote area and leave clues and magazines.
(47:55):
And the rich drunk said that this is fantastic something
to do with my time. I've been wanting a free
case of Canadian Club for a long time. I want
to spend fifty dollars finding that street case. So they
hit them in places like Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, the
Great Barrier, reef Uh, Angel Falls, Venezuela, and um they
(48:18):
hit I think the last one in nine the last
one in nineteen eighty. They hit in Washington, d C. Yeah,
From nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty they hit twenty
five cases and it didn't go quite according to plan um.
I think the first case that they hit at Kilimanjaro
was found by accident like ten years later. He's like
a guy just tripped over again. He's like, oh, case
(48:40):
the Canadian Club is here, some rases, I guess it's mine.
I'm taking good fortune, so U. And then the last one,
by nineteen eighty, they kind of given up on the
whole thing. It was in Washington, d C. And I
think they let the people who found it watched them
just set it down and back away, and they just
walked up. They're like, hi to case, catch the fever.
(49:03):
But the cool thing is is there's a bunch of
them out there that have never been found, still hidden.
So there any rich drunks out there with some with
the passport and some spare time. There's some whiskey that
you could buy at the store, or you could just
spend a lot of money and go out and try
and find it. Right, And that's all we found out
(49:25):
about Canadian whiskey. You got anything else, man, I'm just
glad that people can see your jazz hands lives because
we're doing a lot. He does that in the studio
for me, and I'm just like, I wasn't even thinking
about that. Did you bring a listener mail? Uh? No, sir, No, Okay,
(49:45):
we'll have to double one in later. Sorry. Someone prepared
one to hand to like one of the paper airplane
of the listener mail. They can find people throw stuff
up here. Um, so I guess we'll wrap it up.
There's more story. Everybody treats us in store. Um, if
(50:07):
you want to know more about bars, you can type
that word into the search part how stuff Works. But UM,
I don't think it's gonna bring anything up. You can
try it anyway, And if you want to get in
touch with Chuck and me, you can tweet to us
at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
(50:28):
stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us at
our luxurious home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Lives and by
fogs hany stander planning? Oh yeah, bad's the good stuff?
(00:33):
Can qua rap for everyone? Alright? Good man? Yeah, I
have to say alcohol makes a difference in the energy level,
a huge difference. Popcorn popcorn and diet coke just does
not cut it. Now. Uh So we're here today, hanging out,
(00:56):
just doing our thing, and I have a question for you.
All right, Chuck, have you ever been to a bar? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
I know you have. That was this set up? Um?
Did you realize though, that while you were at this bar,
(01:17):
you were in one of the oldest businesses known to
human kind? The oldest profession. No, not the oldest profession.
This is the oldest business known to human kind. One
of bars have been around a very long time, they have,
but not as long, it turns out, as alcohol does
anybody who's listening to our How Beer Works episode. It's
(01:41):
entirely possible that bread was invented as a starter for beer,
which is pretty awesome. I mean, that makes humanity as
a whole, like a pretty awesome species. Um. The thing was,
booze was around for a very long time before bars,
So there wasn't a place where you just went to
(02:02):
go drink. You just drank everywhere you went pretty much. Yeah.
You literally like you could drink at work, you could
drink at school. There would be meetings and civic meetings.
You would drink there. But there wasn't an establishment with
four walls set up just for drinking at this point, right,
You would drink it like this Saturday night ritual sacrifice
or something like yeah, as you do. Yeah. And so
(02:25):
the first bars then that really kind of pop up
are around the turn of not this past millennia, but
the one before. And you can find them in Italy
in a place called Pompeii. And these aren't necessarily the
oldest bars in the world, but they are one of
the earliest established bars. And they were basically, um, hot
snack bars. They're called it sounds gross there, it does
(02:49):
hot snacks. Hot snacks. Yeah. Well it's like you know,
chicken wings or poutine is a hot snack. That's a
hot snack. That's the hottest snack. That's yeah, because they
took a hot snack and then poured hot gravy. And
what is a cheese that's hot? Right? That's hot? Uh?
(03:10):
You know this was more like I imagine hot olives hot.
I don't know, hot tomatoes. The point is that there
was there was wine at these places, right. And actually,
if you've ever been to Bombay Pompeii um as I have,
you can see these places. They're like bars or countertops
with holes cut out, and they put like jugs of olives,
(03:31):
poutine and wine and stuff. And you would go down
to this this area and hang out and drink and
hang out with your neighbors. And sure like, look at
malt pvesuvius over there. It isn't it lovely? I think
it's ever gonna do it that. We're good. Don't be ridiculous.
You were drunk. So again, the an't these are the
(03:53):
earliest bars, but they're among the earliest um. And the
Romans were really kind of big with bars. In home itself,
there were lots of bars like there were in vesuvious Um.
But the Romans also did something else that led to
the spread of bars, and they built roads. Well, first
of all, they conquered the world and then they built roads,
(04:14):
and along these roads there were inns for travelers, and
in the ends there were bars. Yeah, because if you
were tradesman on a Roman road that it was scary
at night you might get mugged and killed. So they
would do their trading and traveling during the day and
then they would stay in these ends at night. And
just like modern American business travelers, what else do you
(04:34):
do when you're on the road like that, You got
to the hotel bar and you drink your face off.
And that's what the tradesmen did in ancient Rome. You
celebrate not getting murdered that day on the Roman road.
I traded some spices, I didn't get killed, So bring
them the gropp up exactly. And um, so out of
this came the taverns, the ends, the pubs, like they
(04:55):
basically said, that's great, you've gotten in, but we've got
a little town and we could use a couple more,
but we don't need in, so let's just stick to
the to the bar part those are, that's how those
evolved out of there. But um, the oldest bar in
the world probably it's definitely the oldest bar in Ireland,
but it could possibly be Guinnesses investigating as we speak
(05:19):
to the oldest bar in the world right now. Um,
it's called Shawn's. Has anyone ever heard of Shawn's in Athlone, Ireland.
You've been there, it sounds pretty neat. He's part of it.
That's enough to cheer. Um it was. It was founded
in a nine d c and actual, real live, no joke.
(05:39):
Vikings used to get wasted there and this place is
still around, Like you can go get wasted where the
Vikings got wasted, which is pretty amazing. I guess they
would They would eat mushrooms and then kill people all
the way. They would go berserk, remember that. So the
coolest thing about Shawn's actually is, um, it predates the
(06:01):
town that it's in now. It used to be for
two hundred and fifty years just Shawn's Bar and this
old Roman road. And apparently people got tired of like
having to drive home after getting wasted at shawn so
they just built their houses around it. And that's where
the town of athlo And, Ireland came from. That's true,
and uh, it's interesting fact. That's not true. Interesting fact
(06:27):
about Shawn's Bar. In nineteen seven it was owned by
boy George. Yeah, the boy George, not the one you
were thinking of. Boy George. Yeah, I guess you. I
don't know. He thought it was a safe investment. It
had been there for you know that many years. But
he got out of it. He's like, nah, I think
(06:48):
he went broke. Someone in the first show said he
went broke. It's well, that's mean, yeah, but it could
be true. Yeah, I think it's true. So we did
a little research on your town and we were very
pleasantly surprised to find that, you know, your town was
founded on a bar, right, y'all know that gassy Jack.
(07:11):
That's right, Gassie Jack. Within twenty four hours of landing
and founding gas Town, Gassy Jack built a bar. That's
the first thing he did. He's like, I'm gonna have
a town. He woke up the next day. I went,
I'm gonna build a bar. Yeah. And he built the globe,
which is not there. It's it's It was at the
corner of Walter and Carroll Streets. I think in Gastown
(07:34):
a water live corrections, so water and Carol. Hey, I said, Carol, right,
come on, give me some points there. Well, the way
I look at it is we just say that these
people from having the email us right, it's Walter. This
is actually kind of efficient. Yeah, this is cool. Should
just do every show live. So there's there's a there's
(07:56):
a statue of Gassy Jack and um, and we think
very highly of him because of the fact that he
built a bar. But he did things back and we
found out it's not gassy like you think that it
was gassy because it was talkative. Did you guys know
that boring? Yeah? I was all pumped up. I was like,
(08:20):
this guy farted a lot and it's like, just let
that name. He was clearly proud of it because he
let them erect a statue that says gassy Jay. It
was just because he talked a lot. And they do
have a statue there right, Yeah, at Water and Carroll Streets.
So Vancouver itself would have older bars than it does
(08:42):
if like Atlanta where we're from. Uh, it hadn't burned down.
Uh And what was that eighty six? Quickly rebuilt of
course because you're a strong city. But um, in Victoria
we have the six Mile Pub eighty six not too shabby,
not to ship and Garrick said, pub also in Victoria
(09:02):
eighteen sixty seven, except that it's not bad as far
as old as drinking establishments go. No. But uh, guessie
Jack kind of thwarted convention by building the bar first
and then the hotel because that whole tradition of having
a bar in a hotel survived long past the Roman Roads. Yes,
(09:23):
there were pubs and taverns and everything, but that didn't
mean that there weren't bars in hotels any longer. Um,
and that made its way over to the New world,
which is here, that's all of us, and and along
the way. One of the reasons why this whole custom
and and um tradition made its way over was because
(09:43):
you could make a lot of money being a bartender
because you probably owned the bar, you probably owned the
end that the bar was in, and you're probably making
the booze that you were selling, so you were just
making bank. So they the bartenders actually were a among
the wealthiest of the socioeconomics states. Yeah, they were, you know,
(10:05):
the upper tier of society exactly. Uh, in America, we
have the same thing, like Josha. We had ends that
had the bars. But then in eighteen thirty two, the U. S.
Congress said, you know what, let's pass a law. Let's
call it the pioneer in in Tavern law, And let's
just say you don't have to stay in the hotel
to get drunk there. You can just come in, get
(10:27):
south and get on your horse and and crash it
on the way home. I guess somebody just clapped for
the pioneer in in Tavern. Liley. Yes, we won't stay here, right,
But it was a cool on and it changed everything
because all of a sudden you could just have a
bar in a place where you can just go drink. Yeah.
And the industrial age changed everything too, because place like
(10:50):
say New York City became this this beacon for immigrants
to come to and and be skilled laborers and working factories.
And they brought with them their love of of bars,
and they said, what the hell is going on with
this town? Like where are all your bars? We want
to bar here? Bar there, Bar there, bar there? We
want to bar there? Where are all your bars? We
know how to make whiskey too, which exactly like like
(11:12):
just leave it to us, we'll open the bars. Um.
And very quickly bars sprouted in neighborhoods and became customary,
like pretty much overnight in the United States. Yeah, and
they were because sort of like they are now in
like the best towns are the center of civic life.
There were where people congregated. It was the center of politics.
(11:33):
In fact, back in the day, it was untoward to
actually have legitimate advertisements and political campaigns. That was no good.
What you could do is get everyone loaded on election day.
And they even had a name for it, which was
swilling the planters with bumbo, and bumbo was a rum
and the planters were the voters. The voters and basically
(11:56):
whoever got the most people drunk on election day one
like almost literally that's the case, Yeah, which is pretty solid. George,
George Washington, who's the father of our country. He uh,
he made his first bid for the Virginia Legislature and
lost because he didn't he didn't cotton to that kind
of thing. Didn't swill the planners with bumbo. No, he
(12:18):
did not. And he learned his lesson because the next
time he ran for the legislature, he spent something like
eighty percent of his entire campaign fund on booze on
election day and he won big time. He figured it out,
that's right, and uh, to this day, well, it became
rife with corruption. Of course, anytime you're getting people drunk
to vote for you, eventually they're gonna evolve as a
(12:42):
nation and say, yeah, no, maybe that sounds such a
good idea, So let's outlaw drinking on election day altogether.
And for many years that was the case. And in
a couple of states, South Carolina and Kentucky in America,
they still won't let you drink on election day. Yeah,
the bars were closed, which is weird and archaic. And
it's on a Tuesday, which is strange. But they have
(13:03):
like really efficient quick elections just over and everybody's like,
let's get this over with. The bars are closed, this
is awful. Yes, you're elected, they do. They're drinking at home.
I think on election day probably we'll be back to
stuff you should know. Live in Vancouver, right, Josh, right,
hold your horses, everybody, you know, buddy. I was just
(13:25):
hanging out with my very cool nephew over the holidays
and he is a budding photographer and he showed me
his website and I said, that looks like a Squarespace
website and he said, uncle Chuck, it is awesome, and
it looked great. Man, It's dragon drop. It's intuitive. Uh,
you don't need to learn how to code. He has
a great time with it. He's showing off his pictures
and getting business. Yeah. Well, Plus, if you're cool Nephew
(13:47):
gets into any troubles, he can contact. Squarespaces excellent customer support.
They have email support and live chat twenty four hours
a day, seven days a week. Yeah. And if you
need a logo for your company, don't spend a ton
of money. They have an easy logo creator and you
can get a really quality logo for your website at
squarespace dot com slash logo. Plus, all plants have commerce options,
(14:08):
so from hosting an entire story to accepting donations for
your personal blog. It's right there for you. Yeah, and
it's gonna look good on every device from your laptop
to your tablet to your mobile phone. And folks, we
got a deal for you. You can try the product
risk free just by going to www dot squarespace dot
com slash stuff. You're gonna get a fourteen day trial
with no credit card necessary, and if you like it,
(14:31):
it's only eight bucks a month after that, including a
free domain name if you sign up for a year
and without offer code stuff Josh. You can also get
ten percent off your first purchase, so take our word
for it. Get a free fourteen day trial with no
credit card necessary. Just head on over to squarespace dot
com slash stuff. Uh, so we're in New York City.
(14:51):
Let's getting the way back machine. We bought a full
size way back machine so we can. Oh, I gotta
go back to New York City. It's eighteen twenty and
the first celebrity bartender is uh, well, he's not born
because he's old by that point. But his name was
(15:12):
Erasmus Willard, and he worked at the City Hotel in
New York and he was famous. He had two really
meat traits that turns out to be a celebrity bartender.
He's ambidextrous, and he had a photographic memory, so he
could make drinks with both hands and recognize your face
as you're coming in the door and be making your
drink with one hand and recognize his face and then
we say his Because only men were allowed in bars
(15:34):
at this point, by the way, it's right, ladies, it
gets better, it gets better, get better with us. Eventually
women could go to bars. I don't know if you
knew that. So Harasmus Willard was the first dude, and
he sort of paved the way. He was known as
the best known man in the city, and he paid
the way for Josh's hero, my hero Jerry Thomas. Yeah,
(15:58):
come on, give it up for Cheritos. So Jerry Thomas
like that guy. Yeah, everybody's like, you can tell us
more about him? Why is it your hero? Later? Explain?
They're always asking us to explain. Um, Jerry Thomas was
this dude who was flamboyant. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to
(16:22):
say he had a little little liberace and um, you know,
definitely he would tend very flashy. He would tend bar
with like diamond rings on both hands, diamond stickpin and
his tie. Uh literally a rat on each shoulder while
he's tending bar. And this guy rats and this guy
(16:43):
his signature drink was called the Blue Blazer, which was
Scotch and I think a little bit of sugar and
some water, but you would pour it from wine glass
to wineglass on fire with rats on your shoulders and
diamonds sparkling in the flames and like this is Erry Thomas,
which is pretty awesome. Like that in and of itself
warrants mentioned, you know, hundred and fifty years later. But
(17:08):
he also had the brains and the creativity to back
it up. And basically, in Jerry Thomas, you have everything
that we know about cocktails and drinking and going to
a bar in this one dude's person. Yeah. He you know,
he Barten in New York for a while, had his
own place, and then the Civil War started and he
was like, I don't like all this killing of each
(17:30):
other's thing, So I'm gonna go out west and do
my thing out there for a while. And you teld
me when that Civil war is over, and I'll come
back to New York. But you did. He spent some
time out west, and yeah, and Saloons, I guess, applying
as trade and that's right West Coast, and uh, that
is a place you just got pandered to. The West
(17:52):
Coast is a thing, and that's right West Coast. Good job,
and that what they do that works? I think that's
East Side. I thought it was this early on. I
was so bad at it. This is this is West Coast, clearly, right.
(18:18):
So he goes back to New York and he says, uh,
you know what, I'm gonna write a book I'm gonna
I'm gonna spread the joy of my craft. It's gonna
take like everything that he's learned through his travels, all
the inventions he made, and puts it into a book. Yeah,
all the way back in eighteen sixty two. It's really
the first bartenders guide ever. Uh, you should do the
honors here because it's the greatest book title. Well, there's
(18:39):
three titles. It's called The Bartender's Guide, or How to
Mix Drinks or the bomba Bants Companion. I like companion,
that's for sure, especially when you're like wearing diamonds on
both hands and rats on your shoulders. It's the bomb
of Ants Companion. So he had a lot of flash,
(19:00):
we said, and not necessarily, Uh, the other bartenders that
followed in his footups footsteps didn't really necessarily go that far.
But what he did do was he provided craftsmanship and
artisanship to bartending for the first time, and he was
the first guy to really So you know, you should
take pride in what you're doing here and making a
good drink. Yeah, and dress up. We'll kill you to
(19:21):
dress up a little bit, but I kill you to
put a rat on your shoulder for once. So they
don't bite much. Uh so, well, and we'll talk a
little more about Jerry Thomas and what he did. But
while he's working, this is like the boon the hey Day,
the initial boon of drinking. Basically before then everybody drank
(19:42):
and they drank all the time. But this is like
going and getting a drink was a cool thing. You know,
it's legit. But if you listen closely, while Jerry Thomas
is mixing his blue Blazer, there's a drumbeat in the background,
and if you listen, it sounds really like stupid and
wrong minded, and and if you really focus it on it,
(20:04):
you realize it's the drum beat of the temperance movement,
which managed to get prohibition passed, not just a hard country,
but in your country. Yes, let's all booth the Temperance movement.
What a bad idea. And the Canadians knew it was
a bad idea way before we did, because you had
prohibition for a very short time, and this sucks. It's
(20:27):
just stupid with you had it for a couple of
years during wartime from I think nine and nineteen twenty.
It was provincial otherwise, but you had a very nice
Canadian loophole. If you have an ailment, you could get booze.
You could go to even during prohibition, you could go
to the doctor and say, Doc, I got I got
the I got the shapes, I got the shakes. I
need's the booze bad? I got the I got the six,
(20:50):
I got the I got the cold, I got the
Jimmy lings. I'm awake, Doc, I'm awake, Just give me
some foods. And then Doc would be like, yeah, you
had to. Day was a boost and uh in Ontario
in one year in anyone have a guest on how
many prescriptions for booze just in Ontario? Everyone? Where do
(21:12):
you want? What do you say? Four hundred thousand? No, double,
it's eight hundred and ten thousand. People were so sick
that they needed both in one year, just in Ontario.
So we were really impressed by that number. So, as
as is our usual want, we went and looked at
the Canadian Census and we found that eight hundred and
(21:36):
ten thousand, the number of prescriptions in that one year
in Ontario alone, was one tenth the entire population of Canada.
And we're like, wow, the numbers really head up. Canada
is pretty cool like that's when it really broke on us.
We're like, all right, you were a very sickly people.
(21:59):
We needed build better. Uh. And it is funny to
see a play out all these years later with the
marijuana clinics. It's like, it's the same thing. I got
the sis, I'm awake, I got the shakes. Oh you
need some marijuana. I don't eat enough. You have the
neuropaths here right, Like you can just walk in and
(22:20):
and talk to a dude, a neuropath, and they'll say, oh, well,
you clearly need some marijuana. So this is a very
dark time, not only for bartending as a craft because
it was just sorting to become like a legitimate thing
and respectable thing, but for booze period. Prohibition was bad
because there were a lot of bars, but they just
(22:40):
weren't legal. I think they were twice the number of
prohibition pars that there were legal bars. Yeah. There in
the US there were thirty thousand speakeasies, which was twice
the number of legally licensed bars before prohibition was clearly working.
So clearly prohibition was just a great idea all around,
(23:01):
because the mob was like, yes, come here, we can
take care of you just look for the green door
and you'll find a speakeasy. Yeah, and uh it was
bad for bartending though, because whoever the bartender was was
who was the guy who could get the booze, and
who could get the booze didn't necessarily know anything about booze,
for one, or making good drinks, and it wasn't necessarily
(23:21):
good booze. Like it would literally kill you or or
um strike you blind. You heard the saying abot this
will make it go blind. It's really made people go blind,
like to a lot of people. That's where the phrase
comes from. There was there was a batch of industrial
alcohol that I guess the US government thought was going
to fall into the hands of bootleggers, which it did. Um,
(23:44):
so they decided to poison it and a lot of
people died, and the American government was like and like
walked away. It's not it's not very much talked about.
We found out about it, so we're like telling everybody
is that is messed up? But I think in uh,
what is it chuck alone? People died from bad liquor,
(24:08):
and that's not including people who are paralyzed or struggle. Yeah,
what that means actually just occurred to me. That means
twenty five thousand people died, and twenty five thousand more
people were still like, I'm gonna give it a shot,
all right, what are the chances, you know, anything to
take care of the jimmy legs? Yeah, I got the shakes.
So the other cool thing about prohibition is since all
(24:29):
the rules are out the door, basically women said I'm
going to a bar and you're not gonna stop me.
I've come a long way, baby, So women were now
congregating in bars, and men all of a sudden went,
this is great. I don't know why we never allowed
women in here, because we've just been getting drunk by
(24:50):
ourselves and sort of looking at each other and going
home at the end of the night. And that's sort
of weird, which, which, as we'll get to, eventually became
a tradition at bars. That's right, call me home alone.
But at least there were women now and they were
getting south right along with the guys. Right. Great, But
it was because there weren't any rules. It was like
(25:10):
a speakeasy was operating illegally. So a woman would come
to the door and be like, what are you gonna
not let me in, you know, like you're not even
supposed to be serving booze anyway. Yeah, and there's another
unbelievable fact here that Josh dug up that I still
take issue with. Apparently, up until the nineteen eighties and Alberta,
where is that that way? This way? Is that? Easter's
(25:35):
that way? Apparently in Alberta they had laws on the
books and up until the nineteen eighties that still were
gender specific with bars. I know, hey, man, we're pretty
telling you guys about it. We didn't create the laws. Well,
I think it might have been. I don't know if
it was in Forest. Surely not, because they had the
sixties in the seventies too, right, catching up toward the eights.
(26:01):
So prohibition happens, right, and um, everybody's like that was
a really bad idea. Let's never do that again, let's
repeal it, and um oh, let's go to war. So
World War two happened, and that actually had a pretty
significant effect on bars too. Apparently up here they sent
all of your guys over to Europe to fight, and
(26:23):
your guys came back and said, there are these pubs
in Europe that are awesome, so let's build them. Everywhere.
And then after that, like, yeah, we got the pubs.
How about some sports bars too, Let's mix those in
a little bit. And that's pretty much how things went
for a while in Canada. In the US, um our
guys apparently all went to the South Pacific and came
(26:44):
back and we're like tiki culture, and tiki was huge
in the United States. Not a fan here. I don't
understand this at all, Like, how do you not like tiki?
There's like fun uh shirts right, All the drinks are good,
very very easty stuff. Uh. The restaurants that you go
to to drink are fun. It's just nice. Yeah, I'm
(27:06):
a pub guy. I don't I don't see why you
have to differentiates anyway. So that's how things were in
the US and Canada until there's a very dark time
that settled over the land. Not as dark as Prohibition,
but pretty close. And this was the age of the
fern bar. Does anyone know what a fern bar is?
(27:28):
Have you ever heard of that? You know, how you
go to Red Robin and there's like tiffany lamps and
like terrible drinks and all that stuff. Well, you can
thank the invention of the fern bar for that, Like,
have you ever seen a Three's company? Remember the Regal
That was a firm bar and in the seventies they
were all the rage. Yeah, there was a guy in
(27:49):
San Francisco and he went by the name of Henry
Africa because that's a super fun name. His real name
was Norman hob Day and he opened his bar Henry
Africa's because Norman hobb Days is this really bad name
for a bar as well. Plus also he apparently all
the time wore safari gear in like a helmet. Yeah,
(28:11):
And so he went by Henry Africa and Jerry Thomas
were sort of similar. I think they were both flamboyant.
One ruined things, one did great things back. So he
opened up Henry Africa's. There was another one in San
Francisco too in the early uh it was a yeah
in the nineteen seventies and name is called Perry's. And
they were like, you know what, let's get rid of
these classy oak dark bars that everyone loves because they're awesome,
(28:36):
and let's put in ferns and tippany lamps and fat
chairs and let's bring the lights up and let's serve
nasty drinks mixed and machines nasty from bags of mixed
chemical flavored things. Yeah, and I have an idea. This
is gonna make us a million bucks. I'm gonna make
a gun that shoots soda, water and orange juice out
(28:56):
of the same thing. And everyone apparently said, it's the
seventies who cares about anything. Let's go this way for
the firm bars. They did, true, and it was the
sexual revolution. So the ladies that were already going to
bars now felt like, Hey, I'm in a bar and
I can be like a more aggressive all of a sudden,
(29:16):
it's a it's the hip happening times. I'm Diane Keaton.
I can That's what they said to themselves. I can
look for Mr Goodbar and uh and and and have
a drink and go meet a man. Uh. I'd like
I'd like to was it was my lady from the
seventies impression. I have to see Mr Goodbar looking searching
(29:38):
for Mr Goodbar, looking for Mr One. Has nobody ever
seen that movie? Oh my god, that was a pity clap.
They don't have Diane Keaton in Canada. Have you seen it?
I think my threes company references way more well received better,
But the point is you could bad drinks in these bars,
(30:01):
and it's sort of a dark time for the craft
of bartending. Like the Bahama Mama, the Kama Kazi um,
the sides. Yeah, the Harvey Wallbanger, which apparently was so
popular it had its own mascot. It was like, uh,
basically a drunken version of Ziggy just wandering around and
(30:21):
I guess like you would get a sticker or something
if you ordered a Harvey Wallbanger. This is the level
of thought people were putting into drinks. If you just
sell the drink, you give a sticker out, then that's
that's not a place you want to be in. Especially
Ziggy with like exces for eyes. Pretty much changed my mind.
I think have like one of those inclines coming off
of them is kind of nice. I'll get you one
(30:43):
for Christmas. They have the money bay. So this is
the way things were going for a while, uh, until
this very faithful meeting between this guy named Dale de
Groff and a dude who owned a restaurant and he
wanted to Grof to set up a bar for him.
And he said, you know what, I don't want this
(31:04):
usual firm bar crud. This is awful, this New York City, Like,
we gotta do this, right, Yeah, let's let's get back
to basics. And he tossed Dale de Groff a book,
a very important book. What book, the Bomby Box Companion
from eighteen sixty two. Everything came full circle. Yeah, and
Dale de Groff was like, this is amazing. We can
(31:26):
bring craftsmanship back into bartending. Unlet's use real ingredients. Let's
get rid of these stupid swirly mixing machines and these
bags of chemical fruit flavored things, and let's use real fruit,
because there is such a thing as real fruit, and
we should put it in drinks again, like in the
nineteenth century, right, And that's what they did, and the
(31:46):
bar was saved. So when you go to like the
Cascade Room or the Diamond or I don't know if
you guys have been to Boulevard, I know it's like
pretty new. But if you finally do go and you
enjoy a cocktail there, we did our search, uh, and
I hope that was dead on because we I really
put us out there just then. But if you go
(32:08):
to a place where there's a decent cocktail and somebody's
really putting thought into it, you can thank this Dale
Degrof guy for bringing it all back, but really you
should thank Jerry Thomas to tell you the truth. Now,
do you understand why he's my hero? See? They love
Jerry Thomas. But let's talk a little more about him. Right. So,
like at the bars is, they're evolving and bartenders are evolving.
(32:32):
They're going from diamond studded to you know, just normal um.
Cocktails are evolving too. Like early on, basically everybody made
their own booze and they had it in a jug
with three X is on it and they just turned
it up and that was like their cocktail. It's how
they drank. Yeah, like chuck yeah, based turned the three
(32:54):
X jug out. Um. And then when when Jerry Thomas
came on the scenes, like we can do better than this.
There's some cool ingredients that I want to kind of
mess with and create new stuff. So originally there were punches,
which is a huge bowl of hot booze that everybody
drank from the bumbo that the planners swilled. Right. Then
(33:14):
there was a toddy, which apparently from what I can gather,
it is just like a single serving hot punch, right,
And then there were slings and slings were the ones
that had the most promised. Those became what we understand
now as cocktails. They were basically booze um, a little
bit of water, a little bit of sugar and then
maybe some fruit juice. And Jerry Thomas looks at the
(33:36):
sling and he goes, I can do something with this,
and he creates what's called the Baroque Age of cocktails,
where there's just like this great experimentation going on. Nobody
knows what the hell anybody else is doing, but everybody's
trying new stuff and um. All of these The foundation
for what we know now as cocktails came out of Thera. Yeah,
(33:56):
and the first cocktail was mentioned in print the word
in eighteen o three in Amherst, New Hampshire, with the
slogan it's excellent for the head because it was a
morning drink. It was you were supposed to drink a cocktail.
That's where it comes from, the rooster cocktail, that's where
the word comes from. And if you drank too much
of the night before, you would get up in the
morning and make your little fizzy cocktail drink with bitters,
(34:19):
and it was it's like the hair of the dog
that with some of us know and love. You would
drink your cocktail, get punched in the face by your wife,
pick up your acts, and go back out there and
work another day. That's what they used to do. Jerry
Thomas said, you know what, I love the morning cocktail
as much as anybody else. But why can't we keep
(34:40):
drinking throughout the day? Let me see if I can
mess with this. I save alcoholism for the morning. So
through this Baroque era of drink making, it was very
very nuanced, like you would have like a sour, and
a sour was just booze citrus and a little bit
of sweetener usually maybe be curius how or something like that,
(35:01):
and then you would change that dramatically by adding soda,
and then all of a sudden you had a fizz
or if you wanted to use um booze a little
bit of grenadine I think, or was it curius how
sweetener and um brandy or something, you would have a daisy.
And then in Mexico they added tequila to the daisy,
(35:23):
and in um Spanish daisy is margarita, So that's where
the margarita came from. Around this time, I got some
margarita fans out there. Huh So Jerry Thomas was very influential,
but he was Uh, if you ever pick up a
copy of the Bombay Companion and try and read this thing,
it's it doesn't translate that crate to today's um proportions,
(35:45):
Like what is a glug like literally like three glugs
of this and a pinch of that, and uh, well,
I guess pinches easy enough, but well no, I still
don't understand pinch. I mean, yeah, it makes sense, but
what if you're like, that's that's a lot more than
it's a good point. So it took like cocktail historians,
uh to to kind of read the thing and bring
(36:06):
it into the modern era because back then, sugar came
in a big loaf, and sugar wasn't like refined like
it is today, and ice, you know, was had a
big deal chip it away exactly how you wanted to,
And so it took cocktail historians to really kind of
translate all this stuff right, and they did, and along
the way, Jerry Thomas dies, but he creates his great
(36:27):
body of work that's added to over time, and then
eventually we come to like the streamlined classic cocktails that
we have today. Like the Martini or the Manhattan and
all of this was from the work of these like
wonderful genius people who are like fighting on the front
lines against the temperance movement and making life better for
every hero heroes, real heroes, you know, shirking out of
(36:50):
like the Civil War and all that stuff, just doing
God's work basically. And the Martini. We're gonna talk about
some of these classic cocktails and martini. Uh if anyone
here drinks martinis, it's always any Martini things. I love Martini,
(37:12):
says the guy with the PBR, and it's hand some
Martinis right now. I'm just gonna put these back in
my helmet and drink them from my stall. So the Martini,
if you've ever had a Martini, it's very dependent on
the individual on how exactly you like it. Everyone says
that that they like make the perfect martini, but the
ratio for removed the gin and uh no, no no,
(37:35):
I make the perfect Martini Si. Everyone thinks that make
how do you make it? Okay? I use um two
to three ounces? Okay, I used three o three like
Scotch over three three ounces of gin and half an
ounce of uh stir itt. Some crushed ice because it
(37:55):
gets cold or faster. It's way better strain it. Um. Sometimes,
if you want to get a little crazy and you
want to go original, the Martini is actually supposed to
have orange bitters in it. A couple of dashes of
orange bitters. Yeah, you say what, and it seems weird,
but you don't taste the orange. It just does something
different to it. And then a couple of all of us,
all right, Martin, all of juice, I drinklin journey. Do
(38:17):
you do you really drink your sturdy? Oh yeah, I
like it. It's salty. I don't know. Is that wrong? No? No, no,
that's the thing, Chuck, that's the key. There's you enjoy it.
There's no wrong. Absolutely. But the origins of the Martini
are equally contentious because everyone thinks they invented it. There
was a drink in Martinez, California invented the Martini. There
(38:42):
was a place in California called Martinez, and they in Martinez,
they made a drink called the Martinez and they claimed
that the Martini came out of the Martinez, that they
are the inventors, but they're just one of several. Right,
there's another one that um said, it's just named after
Martini and Rossi, the ver with makers. Does anyone else
make vermouth? Oh? Yeah, there's tons of other women. Why
(39:04):
is that the only one I ever see anywhere? I
guess marketing. Okay, man, it's the worst kind of vermouth too,
Oh is it really? Yeah, like every other vermouth on
the planet is better than Martini and Rossy. And that's
the one that everybody knows is Martini and Rossy. I
feel like a heel. No, no, you're fine, Okay, you're
fine if you enjoy Martini and Rossy, patronize me. I'm
(39:27):
getting you back for that one, dude. The West Coast, Yes,
we're on the West Coast drinking. What about the dacri? Yeah?
The dacari was invented in Cuba by an American who
was there working and mines and was bored and uh
went to a bar and said, you know what, don't
(39:47):
you take some rum and some lime and some sugar
and mix that all up and let's make a drink. Uh,
and let's call it a dacori. And that's how the
decor was born. Yeah. And then the first you know,
but making the rosen you take out of the freezer
and put into a blender and put like a fifth
of romans get wasted. Um, that's the firm bar version.
(40:08):
And your wife punches in. You get your acts and
you gotta work. You can't work in on a blender
full of dacori, believe me. The Tom Collins has an
interesting history. Um, kind of dorky now, but in New
York in the eighteen hundreds, it was a big fun
joke to tell everyone that this guy at Tom Collins
(40:29):
has been talking about you. Yeah, because apparently, like just
going to a bar to drink wasn't amusing enough, Like
they had to jazz it up with hoaxes. You know,
they didn't have ziggy stickers at the time, so there
was no Tom Collins. Of course it was just a
big hoax, but apparently, and it was a big laugh
back then to tell people that. So bartenders got the
idea like, hey, these people come around asking where it's
(40:51):
just Tom Collins. I gotta have a word with him.
So let's make a drink called the Tom Collins. So
when they come in and ask for it, to serve
it to him, and they have to give us money,
easy sail, easy peasy every time. What about um, the
Mohito's anybody here like a mohito. I like a mohito too.
It's good like a mohito. It turns out the mohito
(41:12):
might be the oldest cocktail in the entire world. Yeah,
it's what mint little sweetener. Right, that's a different drink.
Actually it's a mint soda water, some sweetener and uh. Rum.
But originally the reason they put all this stuff because
these are pirates drinking this in the sixteenth century. Um.
(41:35):
And the reason they put all this stuff in was
because the stuff they were drinking was just kind of
like a proto rum called taffia or agua gardie nice. Um.
It tasted so bad that you had to put all
this other stuff into it. Um. And so eventually they
introduced copper stills to Cuba and started making like really
(41:56):
good rum there. But they were like, no, I still
like the it and this sugar. Yeah, this is a
really delicious drink. So that's the mohito drink. Here in Canada,
you have a drink called the Caesar, another popular morning drink,
and uh man, they love the Caesar here a Canada.
(42:20):
I know we had eight this morning. I have been
making those for years, unknowingly calling them bloody Mary's the
whole time I did. My friend taught me a recipe.
He taught me a recipe to had clomato in it,
and it was delicious, and so I was like, well,
this is my bloody mary. It's with clomato. I did
(42:41):
not know it was had a different name. It's I'm
gonna call it a Caesar from now on because it
is delicious. It's pretty good, and I really it's it's
way better with the clomato to me than just regular
tomato drink. It's it's great despite its origins. Apparently, the
guy I think his name is Walter Chell, Yeah, from
the Cold to re in Um. He went to Venice
(43:04):
and tried a spaghetti dish. It was like, I want
to drink that tastes like that, and he came up
with the Caesar, which you guys love, so you love
spaghetti in the glass? A clam dish basically, yeah, what
would be really good in this drink? Clams clamns. Yeah,
it is a good drink. We just um, and then
(43:27):
of course we figure you guys are probably beat us
to death with your shoes if we didn't conclude this
podcast with a lengthy, lengthy discussion on Canadian whiskey, which
you call rye, which we're big fans of actually, and
in in Toronto for the first show that we did, um,
we said we're going to talk about Canadian whiskey, and
(43:48):
everybody went ry and we thought everybody's going why and
we we just like looked at each other, like, oh,
we just lost the crowd. This is not good. Somebody
would I thought they would love this. Yeah. Uh. It
turns out we finally everybody calmed down. One person basically
raised their hand and and addressed you guys for us
(44:10):
and said, everyone's saying rye. We call it ry here,
and we're like, okay, so just disregard the last like
forty five seconds of panic that you saw us go through.
So we understand how you guys call it rye, but
we call it Canadian whiskey. The first distillery here in
Canada was open in Quebec City you may have heard
(44:30):
of in seventeen sixty nine. That was number one, and
then by the eighteen forties there were over two hundred distilleries,
which is not too bad. You guys love making your
whiskey because you had people from Europe in Scotland and
Ireland coming over and saying, we know how to make
this stuff. We know how to spell it without the
e like the rest of those dummies. And that's why
(44:54):
you spell whiskey without the e was because of those immigrants.
And uh, a man named John Molson is credited. It's
starting the first distillery in Canada, whiskey distillery. And and
you're rye is very similar to our Bourbon, except the
process is different. Like both of them have corn, a
lot of corn in them, a lot of malti barley,
(45:15):
and then a little bit of rye. The differences in
Bourbon County, Kentucky where they have the soberest elections in
the country. Um, ironically, ironically, Uh, they take the the
corn and the rye and the barley and they ferment
and distill it and age it together. You guys take
(45:36):
your barley and your corn and your rye and you
make liquor out of them, and then you bring them
together at the end, which is why rye is a
blended whiskey like Scotch. Actually, yeah, apparently the rye part
of it is the smallest grain, the smallest amount of
grain that they use. But it provides the most flavors.
So I guess that's why you call it right and
(45:58):
so um, during the Civil War, our our civil war,
when our our country was torn asunder, you guys were
totally fine. Um, we were busy fighting. We weren't our
forefathers were. Um, the Clarks were killing the Bryant's. Yeah,
I feel really bad. It's all good. So during the
(46:22):
Civil War, during the Civil War, our our distilleries shut down, like,
we're like, we have other things to focus on, um,
but we still need booze. So Canada said, we got
plenty of it here, you guys go. And after the
Civil War, Um, when our distilleries went back online, there
was an enormous amount of competition still because everybody loved
(46:46):
you're rye. You know, we're like, I just got my
leg amputated, give me some more of that stuff. And
you guys were more than happy to oblige, so much
so that the American distillers were like, Congress, we need
you to step in and do something about this. And
Congress did They said any No, it's true, they said,
any any booze that's manufactured outside of the United States
(47:10):
has to have his country of origin on the label.
So in eighteen ninety a very very popular whiskey from
Canada called Club Whiskey became Canadian Club. I'm still around
today because of a law, because of us, because of
our Congress. Thank you, that's right. And uh, Canadian Club
(47:34):
remained super popular still to this day. And in the
nineteen sixties. One of the reasons. One of their cool
little advertising tricks was that had this cool campaign called
hide a Case n sixty seven. They said, Hey, you
know what we'll do. Well, let's appeal to the rich
drunks of the world and let's hide a case of
whiskey in some remote area and leave clues and magazines.
(47:55):
And the rich drunk said that this is fantastic something
to do with my time. I've been wanting a free
case of Canadian Club for a long time. I want
to spend fifty dollars finding that street case. So they
hit them in places like Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, the
Great Barrier, reef Uh, Angel Falls, Venezuela, and um they
(48:18):
hit I think the last one in nine the last
one in nineteen eighty. They hit in Washington, d C. Yeah,
From nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty they hit twenty
five cases and it didn't go quite according to plan um.
I think the first case that they hit at Kilimanjaro
was found by accident like ten years later. He's like
a guy just tripped over again. He's like, oh, case
(48:40):
the Canadian Club is here, some rases, I guess it's mine.
I'm taking good fortune, so U. And then the last one,
by nineteen eighty, they kind of given up on the
whole thing. It was in Washington, d C. And I
think they let the people who found it watched them
just set it down and back away, and they just
walked up. They're like, hi to case, catch the fever.
(49:03):
But the cool thing is is there's a bunch of
them out there that have never been found, still hidden.
So there any rich drunks out there with some with
the passport and some spare time. There's some whiskey that
you could buy at the store, or you could just
spend a lot of money and go out and try
and find it. Right, And that's all we found out
(49:25):
about Canadian whiskey. You got anything else, man, I'm just
glad that people can see your jazz hands lives because
we're doing a lot. He does that in the studio
for me, and I'm just like, I wasn't even thinking
about that. Did you bring a listener mail? Uh? No, sir, No, Okay,
(49:45):
we'll have to double one in later. Sorry. Someone prepared
one to hand to like one of the paper airplane
of the listener mail. They can find people throw stuff
up here. Um, so I guess we'll wrap it up.
There's more story. Everybody treats us in store. Um, if
(50:07):
you want to know more about bars, you can type
that word into the search part how stuff Works. But UM,
I don't think it's gonna bring anything up. You can
try it anyway, And if you want to get in
touch with Chuck and me, you can tweet to us
at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
(50:28):
stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us at
our luxurious home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.