Thursday
Regular TDE readers know I’m not a big fan of New Years Eve. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. Relative to Thanksgiving Eve, I’m not a big fan of New Years Eve. Also, I’m more of a fan of New Years Eve afternoon, rather than night. This is the day that I gather with men to settle the last year’s sports betting, drink, watch football, and talk about whatever comes up under the sun. So although Thanksgiving Eve is my favorite drinking night of the year, today features my favorite drinking afternoon.
We’re gathering at a new drinking establishment in town. My eldest daughter went there last night. I texted her, “Hey, ask if they serve the Moscow Mule. I think that’s what I’ll drink tomorrow night.” Alas, she asked, but the waitress seemed confused and said she’d look into it. She never did, so I’m guessing they don’t serve the Mule. I’ll probably have to opt for vodka tonic or one of their funky drinks.
“What,” dear TDE reader you ask, “is a Moscow Mule?”
It’s vodka, ginger beer, and lime. More than that, it is the drink that put vodka on the map in the United States:
… Read the restUntil the late 1940s, vodka was virtually unknown outside Russia, Poland, and Scandinavia. In the West, America’s enthusiasm for whiskey and gin overshadowed any interest in vodka, which was known simply as a spirit vaguely linked to dark Chekhov plays and Tolstoy novels. That all changed, however, due in no small part to a Russian refugee named Vladimir Smirnoff, whose family previously ran the Moscow distillery that was the official purveyor of vodka to the czar. . . . By 1946, vodka had begun to make a discernible ripple in the American cocktail culture, when a Smirnoff representative named John Martin
