THE ROARING TWENTIES & PROHIBITION

       Prohibition was both a terrible time for alcoholic beverages and a time of renewal. In a classic psychological turn, Prohibition helped spark interest in cocktails by forcing them underground—some say that for every legitimate bar that closed, six speakeasies opened in its place. One big unexpected social impact was that women joined men at the bar. Speakeasies also helped to fuel the Jazz Age, providing spots for musicians to play and the opportunity for social interaction across the economic and racial spectrum.

Popular belief holds that the drinks created during this era are merely a result of the need to cover the harsh flavor of bad booze available from moonshiners; but there was still good liquor being imported by bootleggers, and what comes out of this time period are not just washy hooch-covers, but a number of glamorous cocktails of impeccable subtlety and balance.

It is no coincidence that jazz and the cocktail—two of the greatest American contributions to the world—became codified in this era and endure together in our collective psyche. As New York Times writer William Grimes reminds us, “The cocktail shaker was a metronome for a decade in which everything was fast. It matched the speeded-up world of the newsreel and the silent film, the rapid steps of the Charleston, and the frantic arm-waving on the floor of the stock exchange.” Huzzah!