1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

I. PREAMBULARY

D URING what facetious American newspaper column– ists sometimes referred to as the Period of the Great Drought-that is to say, during the days of the Noble Experiment-the art of mixing cocktails as known and practiced up to 1919 lapsed into a sort of desuetude, even if that could not be descrjbed as "innocuous" or even as mnox1ous. In those larger times ,when legal liquor could be had more or less freely in tHis country, if one had the price, or was fortunate enough to be declared in by some host standing treat, new drinks owed their invention either to unusually enterprising barmen, or to customers gifted with imagination and longing for new savors and flavors or, possibly, the inspiration was attributable to what they had already drunk. Here and there one knew so'me amateur experimenter whose chief indoor sport was putting together new and sometimes weird and even terrifying concoctions and trying the result upon his friends. During the decade and a half preceding the .Great War, "Have you tried this one?" was almost as frequent a prelude to something as "Have you heard this one?" . The war in Europe definitely diminished creative ac– tivities in the cocktail line. From London we heard that Britishers, drawn into the combat, had taken to drinking champagne, and were even being weaned away from their Scotch. When the A.E.F. discovered France, a simul– taneous discovery was made of the wines of the country, I