Moscow Mule

No, we're not talking about Boris. This mule is the one that kicked off the vodka craze in the United States back in the '50s. A strange creature with a mild bite, the Moscow Mule owes more to stateside hucksterism than to its pre-perestroika namesake.

A year after World War II, Americans were intrigued by one of their more notorious allies. Some went as far as to suggest that the Moscow Mule, made with the white whiskey most associated with Russia, was a heady olive branch. Although we'd like to encourage such claims of good will, we must not betray the true tale of this ersatz classic of a mixed drink. Made with 2 ounces Alchemist would agree that the Moscow Mule is a cool vodka libation with a slow ginger burn that warms the blood on a cold winter night.

The Moscow Mule became a national favorite in just a few years. Martin was a farseeing flack who even contemplated selling low-fat foods long before most. But he was first determined to get Americans to try something few had ever considered - vodka. His timing, however, wasn't ideal and his decision to buy a vodka distiller - a spirit almost unheard of in the States during the '30s - nearly got him fired.

The vodka was Smirnov, originally owned by a family of the same name, whose members started life as serfs before eventually rising to near royalty by pawning off their spirit to czars during the late 1800s. When the family became the official purveyor of vodka to the court of Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks weren't so understanding, and in 1918 the faction turned the Smirnovs' distillery into a garage. The family recipe made it to France via an older Smirnov brother and was sold to another Russian émigré before making it into the hands of Martin, with the Anglicized name Smirnoff.

Several years after Heublein purchased the vodka distillery, the company still relied on sales from its A-1 steak sauce, and the VP's purchase had become known as "Martin's folly." To save face, Martin hit the road with Smirnoff vodka in tow. The sales trip wasn't going too well, so while in Hollywood - presumably visiting the pretty, young, but now-forgotten, actress who later became his wife - he decided to stop at the Cock 'n' Bull for dinner and drinks. Known as the oasis of Sunset Strip, the Cock 'n' Bull was then owned by Jack Morgan, a fine restaurateur who was losing money fast trying to sell the ginger beer he made on the side. Morgan had a friend who was also experiencing business troubles, only she was trying to offload mugs made in a copper factory she had inherited. The three sat down and concocted a Moscow Mule, which was to be served in and sold with a 5-ounce copper cup with an embossed kicking mule on one side. Besides garnishing the drink with a lime wedge, the marketeers added a twist of a cucumber peel and claimed the drink had the kick of a mule. Before shoving off, Martin took a snapshot of the drink with a Cock 'n' Bull bartender to show mixers at his next watering hole - proof of the drink's popularity and its success with the competition down the street.

Martin didn't let his marketing efforts rest there. By the time the New York Daily News' front page flashed a photo of local bartenders parading down city streets with banners patriotically declaring, "We can do without the Moscow Mule," Heublein explained that Smirnoff had long stopped serving those nasty Commies. In fact, the distiller was making its vodka with 100-percent American grain in the bastion of the motherland, New England.

The Yanks bought both the story and the spirit, and as James Brady (author of The Coldest War) shows, the Moscow Mule became associated with the innocence of youth: "We were 21 or 22 and sure we would always be young ... we drove up the Shirley Highway to Washington weekends to chase girls, which it was okay to call them then, and fall in love and dance close as people did to the big-band music of that year and drink Manhattans and a new vodka drink called a Moscow Mule. And when you look back on it now, it seems as wonderful and yet unreal as an MGM musical."

Older, perhaps wiser, and not terribly worried about a Red scare, we admit to giving in to this drink more for its story than for its taste. Any bartender at any bar can make it well, and we'll even take it with ginger ale instead of ginger beer, though we always skip the cucumber peel. Besides, it's always a pleasant reminder that it's been awhile since that whole Sputnik incident.

T H R E A D S : Where to share your thoughts.

Send comments to Cocktail.

Copyright © 1994-97 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.