2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:20
The Milanese, to whom you can tell everything except that they don't know how to drink well, rattle off the story like a refrain. Is called Moscow Mule despite the name it was invented in 1940 in a Los Angeles club.
Apparently a vodka distributor, a certain John G. Martin of Heublein, was having great difficulty in convincing Americans to drink Russian vodka Smirnoff and so, together with Jack Morgan, barman of the Cock 'n Bull on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood who since for his part he could not dispose of his stocks of ginger beer (a soft drink based on ginger), he launched this cocktail on the market, which has the same physical impact as the kick of a mule!
Helped by a friend who owns wonderful, expensive and unsold copper glasses, she also found the perfect container to keep it at the right temperature.
The original recipe featured Morgan's ginger drink, Martin's Smirnoff vodka, and a squeeze of lime.
The Moscow Mule was born. Cocktail by chance.
Much less fascinating, I tell you right away, my approach as a Milanese emigrant to the Moscow Mule.
I summarize the phases.
First 6 months - cocktail euphoria (you drink them all and you like them all), you even eat the deadly focaccia.
Year 1 - you start to select, your liver is tired from too many aperitifs. You have 7 favorite cocktails, you begin to understand the difference between what is good and what is not, also based on the state in which you wake up the next morning.
Year 1 a few days later - you think you have figured out where to go for a drink and which cocktail you prefer, but surprisingly you continue to have some denials. You no longer touch food, not even the vegetables in pinzimonio (because they are close to the infamous focaccia).
Year 2 - further reduction, drink only 3 cocktails. Mine: Americano, Negroni, Moscow Mule. The three do not yet know how to classify them, you are confused by external factors such as the barman, the club, the guy who stares at you in the background, the competition always too blonde and too thin.
Year 3 or 4, it depends on the degree of Milaneseization - you know how to choose, you become wise. Practice Zen in front of the buffet even under the munchies. When you enter the places you don't choose, you look at the alcohol labels, if there are any, and you almost always drink a martini cocktail safe. For the rest just your favorite.
Obviously Moscow Mule. (Also inquire about the fantastic travel kit).
I taste it for the first time at the Mag Cafè in Ripa di Porta Ticinese 43. Love at first sight: fresh, not too alcoholic, slightly spicy with ginger, acidulous enough for the drops of lime. The barman tells me the history of the cocktail. It's love.
Today the original (believed) version is the following: in a 35cl copper mug or in an equivalent long drink glass, pour 5 cl of Smirnoff vodka, fill the glass with ginger beer and sprinkle a few drops of juice of lime. Easy.
Not really. Because of the all-Italian creative habit of being creative, full of inventiveness. Then ginger ale replaces ginger beer, similar but not the same. We add fresh cucumber sometimes. We decorate with the mint leaf, which makes a lot of parsley on a square plate. But the habit is not only Italian. In the London Mule, vodka is replaced with gin. Total upheaval.
Also for this reason, I who go crazy for the Moscow Mule original recipe, I undertake a personal research and move on to Year 5.
Year 5 - you become truly expert, you know everything about your cocktail and go around Milan and the world in search of the Perfect Moscow Mule (not revised, not deconstructed, not personalized, not "my way").
From the top of such great experience you can also dispense addresses where you can drink really good cocktails in Milan and where you could meet me embracing my glass of Moscow Mule:
Elita Bar (via Corsico, Milan), Rita & Cocktail (via Fumagalli 1, Milan), Nottingham Forest (viale Piave 1, Milan), Milanes foundriesi (via Giovenale 7, Milan)
Low Bar (via Plinio 39, Milan), Quadronno Bar, sandwiches aside (via Quadronno 1, Milan).
And you? What is your favorite cocktail?