The unquestionable proof of truth
As you might expect from history involving intoxicants, the back-stories about who invented what drink under what circumstances are sometimes hazy. In that haze exists opportunity. My name is J. Finch Barlow, and I’m a researcher and writer in the style of historiography frequently referred to as “Makebelievory” or sometimes “What?”
Makebelievians relay history from the commonly-ignored perspective of those who were not there at the time. Novelists refer to such people as “fictional characters.” But Makebelievory makes no strict distinction between real people who did real things, and false people who did things we imagine they did, even though they didn’t because they were not real.
We are now a couple of decades into the Second Great Cocktail Awakening, a magical time to be alive and imbibing, and a perfect moment to look back at the fauxrigin stories behind the first century-and-a-half of cocktail history.
This newsletter will give you many of those stories every week-or-so, drink by drink, written by some of the Makebelievian school’s brightest lights. The recipes for each cocktail are factual. And delicious. In the interest of transparency, and to offer a helpful trail for future cocktail researchers, our contributors will provide sources for each cocktail’s fauxrigin story. Though in the spirit of my particular school of history, the sources we rely on are, more often than not, pretend-y.
Historical context is imperative to understanding the way we live now, and as a Makebelievian I contend that providing critical background about cocktails through historical stories that aren’t verifiable or legitimate or possible is our responsibility to you, our readers. Only by making up what didn’t actually happen can we hope to understand what might have.
In the (actual) words of Harry Craddock (existed) in his (real) Savoy Cocktail Book of 1930…
There exists definite unquestionable proof of the truth of this story, but no correspondence upon the subject can in any circumstances be entertained.
Bottoms Up,
J. Finch Barlow
Editor
