Sober October Guide Part 4: Cocktails Are Cocktails, Some Don’t Have Alcohol

Award-winning bartender and wellness coach, Derek Brown, discusses how what makes the iconic drink isn't a single ingredient but something called "stopping power."

Cocktails. Photo by Farrah Skeiky.

At the height of my bartending career, I once wrote down every cocktail I knew and it was around 400 recipes.

There’s the short, stout Old Fashioned with its muddled fruit smashed and sunk to the bottom or, if you’re a purist, a strip cut from a lemon. Then there’s the Martini, which is crystal clear and as sure a delivery system for olives as those shallow bowls from Spain with two attached cups, one for pits and one for picks. And, of course, the colorful sours, Daiquiris, Margaritas, and Cosmos in elegant, stemmed glasses with a wedge of fruit often placed on the rim.

And that’s barely a scratch on the surface. There are a lot of cocktails.

What do they all have in common?

Alcohol, right?

Wrong.

There’s something about the cocktail that transcends alcohol. Alcohol, aka ethanol, is a powerful ingredient in cocktails, no doubt. Mostly because it does something that sets the cocktail apart from almost all other drinks. But it isn’t the only ingredient that does that.

Here’s Where You Can Put That Ginger

First mention of the word cocktail as a drink in America was in 1803. The first definition of the cocktail in print was in 1806. In both cases, it had alcohol. (Here’s a great link to the cocktail timeline.) But that definition didn’t resemble the vast array of drinks we call cocktails today. It was closer to an Old Fashioned––spirits, sugar, water, bitters (also the name of my first book). That was its technical definition. However, compare that to the ingredients of a Piña Colada––rum, pineapple juice, and coconut cream––which is also called a cocktail and you may be scratching your head.

Definitions change.

Piña Colada. Photo by Nole Garey.

I’m glad they change, too. Hopefully, language evolves alongside a greater understanding of the world but also with its usage. However, when I’m invited to a cocktail party where they’re serving glasses of Chardonnay and beer without a single cocktail in sight, I realize we need some guidelines after all.

There’s one mention of the cocktail before 1803, and it’s in a London paper from 1798. I discuss it in this excerpt from my book “Mindful Mixology: A Comprehensive Guide to No- and Low-Alcohol Cocktails”:

In my previous book, Spirits, Sugar, Water, Bitters: How the Cocktails Conquered the World I answered the question, “What, then, is a Cocktail?” But there was one thing I left out. The cocktail I was discussing is made with spirits, sugar, water, bitters according to an 1806 definition in the Columbian Balance and Repository, a paper from upstate New York. But the word cocktail existed before that, appearing in London 1798, and might have even been a non-alcoholic drink containing ginger.

Writer and historian David Wondrich explains how the word itself came from an unlikely place, at least a place you wouldn't usually go looking for such words: a horse’s rear. Horse owners would show their horses to prospective buyers with a piece of ginger shoved up the rectum, also called figging, to increase the horse’s sale value. It would then cause the horse to cock its tail and appear more lively (anyone would be lively under such circumstances).

When the word appears as a drink, it’s in relation to political satire (the 1806 definition I previously mentioned was also political satire, proving drinking, politics, and a horse’s ass all have a natural affinity). Cocktail historians Jared and Anastasia Miller found the reference in a London newspaper discussing what the prime minister, Mr. Pitt, ordered—“a 'cock-tail' (vulgarly called ginger).” However, Wondrich notes that the price is formidably lower than most alcoholic drinks listed on the menu at two pence. Was the first “cocktail” actually a non-alcoholic drink?

If that‘s the case, then non-alcoholic cocktails own the word itself and cocktails should either be called cocktails or alcoholic cocktails. But perhaps the better thing to take from this is that ginger plays an important role in more than making horses peppy.

Photo courtesy of Rizzoli.

Between Papaya Juice and an Atom Bomb

In Mindful Mixology, I make the case that there are four sensory characteristics that help define what is a cocktail: texture, piquancy, length (volume of liquid without juice or sugar), and intensity of flavor. I still believe that and it helps me construct non-alcoholic cocktails that have truly earned the name cocktail. Not sweet and simple mocktails that may be tasty but lack sufficient depth to be considered adult sophisticated drinks.

However, if I were to put my finger on one sensory characteristic that defines a cocktail, it would be piquancy, which we can also call “stopping power.” That stopping power is very present in the taste of whiskey or Tequila when we take a shot and slam our fist down on the table. Like Ralph Wiggum says in The Simpsons, “It tastes like burning.”

David Embury, who wrote “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks,” is one of the most well-studied cocktail theorists, even if he was a horrible bigot. In his book, he had a section about what makes a cocktail, which included some flowery prose about friendship. But the last point he mentions is particularly relevant:

It must have sufficient alcoholic flavor to be readily distinguishable from papaya juice, yet must not assault the palate with the force of an atomic bomb.

I believe this explains it well, but only with one alteration: It must have sufficient piquancy to be readily distinguishable from papaya juice, yet must not assault the palate with the force of an atomic bomb. That’s principally what distinguishes cocktails with or without alcohol from a mocktail and all other drinks.

Pinch Hitter. Photo by Nole Garey.

To Make a Cocktail, Add Ingredients You Can’t Stand

With that said, how do you make non-alcoholic cocktails by harnessing this stopping power? The answer is simple: You need to add something to it that you usually can’t stand on its own.

And here’s where things get weird. Why on earth do us humans want to drink something we find repugnant? Our taste for bitter and sour things, which is the nexus of bad taste, is an age-old evolutionary adaptation. Why fight it?

There are, of course, a range of possible explanations from gut health to simply being a psychopath or depressed. But another answer is that it’s fun. Just like the thrill of skydiving or skateboarding, drinking something that contains piquant ingredients makes us feel more engaged and alive.

Alcohol is one of those ingredients. Ginger, another. To that list, I’d add vinegar, capsicum, and anything very sour or bitter. Any of these can take what used to be tea, juice, or soda and turn it into a cocktail. Remember, the only difference between a Tom Collins and lemonade is gin. Add vinegar and ginger instead, as I did with my Pinch Hitter cocktail, and you have a non-alcoholic cocktail.

I go into much greater detail about how to make no- and low-alcohol cocktails in Mindful Mixology if you want to know more. And there are 60 recipes, too.

Regardless of what they’re called, making and sharing non-alcoholic drinks is fun. And that’s at the heart of what makes them so valuable to us. Unlike food, we don’t really need the calories of cocktails to survive. Cocktails are, essentially, frivolous and ephemeral. Things that are serious and permanent pervade our world right now, including death, disease, and destruction. We shouldn’t ignore them but we can, for moments at a time, slip away from the seemingly nihilistic universe and affirm something entirely human about ourselves in making cocktails, with or without alcohol.

Next Week: It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over.

In next week’s post, I’ll wrap up my Sober October Guide and reveal what’s next. Sign up for my free newsletter if you haven’t already and get notice of new posts before anyone else.

I’m grateful to my partners in the Sober October Guide: Sunnyside, a science-backed mindful drinking app that can help you during the challenge (sign up for free), and Boisson, an online retailer of curated non-alcoholic drinks that ships nationwide (get 10% off with the discount code: DEREK10).

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Derek Brown is an author, award-winning bartender, NASM-certified wellness coach, and founder of Positive Damage, Inc.

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