CLASSICS

The contested origins of the martini. It was said to also be prepared for miners celebrating striking gold. Others believe it was invented in 1911 at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York by bartender Martini di Taggia, served to billionaire John D. Rockerfeller with equal parts London dry gin and dry vermouth.

Some stories suggest that the Bloody Mary was named after a server named Mary who worked at a saloon bar called The Bucket Of Blood in Chicago. Others claim it was named after Queen Mary Tudor of England. No one knows for sure, but as Prohibition waned the drink took off in America and the name stuck.

Cocktail created at the beginning of the 21st century by Douglas Ankrah, a bartender of South African origin based in the city of London. Owner of important bars in the British capital such as London LAB's Bar and Townhouse Bar, in the Knightsbridge neighborhood, he is a bar and restaurant advisor and also a writer. In 2002 he created a cocktail that has traveled around the world and has acquired international renown. It is this month's proposal at Torre Rosa: the Pornstar Martini. According to its creator, this cocktail has nothing sexual about it. He describes it as a bold, elegant and playful glass. His intention was to represent the festive, relaxed and pleasant atmosphere of cocktail bars. Furthermore, he claims that, like many other great creations in history, the mixture of ingredients came about more by mistake than anything else.

Apart from Thomas' book, Whisky Sour has been referenced in two other documents: the 1870 edition of the Wisconsin newspaper Waukesha Plainsdealer, and in 1872 from a former ship steward named Elliot Staub, who “invented” it in a bar in Iquique (then part of Peru).

The Origin of the Old Fashioned, the recipe is linked to bartender and bourbon distillery, James E. Pepper. Rumors link Pepper to The Pendennis Club before he allegedly brought the cocktail to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel bar in New York City. Some claim Louisville as the home of the Old Fashioned while others maintain it's really NYC.

"The Boulevardier was created in the late 1920s by Erskine Gwynne, an expatriate writer, socialite and Vanderbilt family relation who founded a Paris literary magazine called The Boulevardier," says cocktail author Robert Simonson in a New York Times article

This modern classic was invented in 2008 in Hamburg, Germany by bartender Jörg Meyer. Meyer originally called his creation the Gin Pesto, a very fitting name for a basil-forward sip. It seems that over time, the name transformed into more of a description of its preparation.

Diffords guide states it was created by the legendary Don Javier Delgado Corona, owner and bartender of La Capilla, in Tequila, Mexico. Sweet, sour, a little bitter, and salty, it's got all four taste groups, plus ice, bubbles, and alcohol; what's not to like?

1919, The Beginning: The story of the Negroni begins at the Caffè Casoni in Florence. There's no documented historical account, but it is believed by cocktailians that Count Camillo Negroni invented the drink when he ordered an Americano made with gin in place of the usual soda water.

There are many theories to how the Manhattan came about and the most popular of these is that in the early 1880s Dr Iain Marshall came up with the recipe for a party that was held at the Manhattan Club in New York City by Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston's mother.

Around 1750, the Gin Fizz was born, a cocktail that would become one of the most popular drinks in the world. At that time, sailors were most affected by vitamin C deficiency and scurvy, a potentially fatal disease. Admiral Nelson came up with the idea of mixing gin with lemon to help prevent the disease among his men.

An abridged, inebriated history: The first recorded Tom Collins recipe is from the second edition of Jerry Thomas' book, “The Bartender's Guide”, published in 1876, in which the Tom Collins is a class of drink, with the type of alcoholic spirit being used specified after the name Tom Collins.

The pisco sour originated in Lima, Peru. It was created by bartender Victor Vaughen Morris, an American from a respected Mormon family of Welsh ancestry, who moved to Peru in 1904 to work in a railway company in Cerro de Pasco.

Francisco "Pancho" Morales says he created the Margarita in the summer of 1942 whilst working in a bar called Tommy's Place on Juarez Avenue in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after "A lady came in and said, 'Let me have a Magnolia. '" on the 4th July 1942.

The Aperol Spritz is an Italian aperitif, originally created in 1919 by bartender Raimondo Ricci. The drink was invented as a means to combat the heat and humidity of the summer months in Italy. It became popular with people who wanted to have something light before dinner.