Straight Up Or On The Rocks Analysis

In Straight Up or On the Rocks, Grimes dives into how the cocktail is more than a drink consumed on ice in bars, but how America has used it to established its culture and character both on home soil as well as in Europe. His claim that America has given much to the world, and should take pride in the cocktail, flavors the book as we are guided from the very humble beginnings in a colonial tavern to the believed second coming of mixed drinks today, a millennium after their introduction. From the classic martini glass that is now the symbol of late night neon bars everywhere to the speakeasies that kept the booze afloat, Grimes brings about the cocktail as a symbol of pure invention and modernity. Something that reflects our popular culture of the time just as our clothing or music choice. But the question begs, what truly constitutes that of a cocktail and when did this word become common? Grimes ensures that we know the basic definition in the preface with the common reference to that of the 1806 definition in a newspaper. Spirits, water, sugar and bitters. But the author offers a caveat, something that cannot be proven not to be a cocktail actually is

He shares many, from mispronunciations of the French word meaning mixed drink, coquetei, to a butchering of ancient Aztec princess who served her father. From a wife of a bartender putting chicken feathers in a glass while yelling viva le cock-tail to the foam appearing as a docked tail of a carriage horse. He offers engaging evidence behind most of these without ever providing his own theory or exhibiting his belief in any of them. He refuses to make a choice on where the cocktail became named yet he’ll make the claim that it began in the colonial taverns of Boston. Without a precise indication of its naming, it calls into question his assertion of the