Let There Be Bloody Mary
This time of year, it’s hard to attend a brunch, a football-game viewing or any type of daylight celebration that happens without Bloody Mary drinks at the ready. Not only are they hearty options when the weather gets cold, but many find a restorative quality in the combination of vitamins, saline electrolytes and the hair of the dog—especially the morning after a big party.
But it may come as a surprise that in the long history of spirits, this satisfying combination of tomato juice and vodka is a relative late arrival. It wasn’t until the 1920s—long after the Golden Age of cocktails—that the concoction crashed the bar party and it wouldn’t be until decades later that it became a regular guest. Nevertheless, the combination of liquor, savory juice and spices now occupies its own niche and seems like a timeless classic.
To be fair, the Bloody Mary brought together two ingredients—tomato juice and vodka—which had never before been part of the mixologist’s arsenal. Then it added a slew of others more commonly found in a kitchen, rather than the back bar. While sourcing tomato juice and vodka may seem unremarkable today, it would have been difficult a century ago. For starters, 1917 is known to be the year when tomato juice was first publicly served as a beverage. A hotel chef in Indiana was out of oranges and improvised with the fruit he had on hand. The red juice caught on and became available in a can in the 1920s. In the same era, vodka was almost unheard of on American shores, except among eastern European communities.
Claimants to bringing the obscure liquids together are two: a French bartender and an American entertainer. Fernand Petiot said that he devised the drink while working at the renowned Harry’s New York Bar in Paris in 1921. The vaudevillian raconteur Georgie Jessel said that he thought it up in Palm Beach after an all-night drinking binge in 1927. His idea was to create a hangover cure using the strange spirit, with tomato juice as its partner.
Jessel, known as the Toastmaster General, embellished his story over the years. In the 1950s, he would appear in print ments for Smirnoff, tying his invention to that vodka brand, which wasn’t even available in the United States at the time he said he first mixed the drink. Petiot would also alter his story, changing the date of origin and saying he was simply the one responsible for spicing up the mix. Neither wrote the first printed recipes, which would not appear until the 1940s.
Whoever invented it, one thing is certain: There’s nothing certain about the Bloody Mary. Imbibers pursue their own idiosyncrasies according to their taste for the amounts of spices in the base recipe and the many options for embellishment that have been added over the years. Those tend to be spicy, herbaceous and savory. To some, the riotous ingredients are what make the drink. To others, over-spicing and adding new flavors is off-putting. When serving a crowd, the best strategy is to create the essential Bloody and let your guests instruct you how to doctor it. The basic formula is:
4 oz. tomato juice
2 oz. vodka
¼ oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
3 dashes Tabasco sauce
Pinch of salt and pepper
Once this is built, you can fine tune the drink to personal preferences. Popular additives to have on hand include horseradish, chili and curry powder, celery salt, ginger, bitters, clam juice and beef broth. But it’s best to hold off on specifics until requested. What makes the drink for some can be a deal breaker for others.
Once the personalized ingredients are collected, it’s time to mix. With many cocktails, the usual question is “shaken or stirred?” With the Bloody Mary, the best answer is: neither. The drink has a complexity that defies short swizzling. (And who wants to put off enjoyment with prolonged stirring?) On the other hand, shaking turns the juice to foam, which is unsightly and ruins the mouth feel.
Instead, use a time-honored technique called rolling. You build the drink in a mixing tin and gently pour it into another tin that you’ve filled with ice. Using either a julep or a Hawthorne strainer, pour the mixture back into the first and repeat the process five or six times. The process chills, aerates and mingles the ingredients without forming bubbles. A julep strainer will not only contain the ice, but—should there be chunky bits in the mixture—remove them as well.
While not difficult, the maneuver introduces a bit of showmanship into the presentation. With a little practice you should do it quite smoothly. The flash move is something called throwing. You hold both tins at eye level or above and pour the contents of the iced tin into the empty one as you lower the latter two or three feet. You might want to leave this to the movie mixologists. Watching the colorful liquid stream is entertaining, but invites peril. Tomato juice is not something you want to spill all over the rumpus room.
Finish by straining the liquid into a pint glass or goblet over ice. Large ice cubes are key here. While the Bloody is so often associated with the winter months, part of its bracing quality comes from the mix remaining cold to the last sip. Small cubes melt faster and create a sludge.
It’s best to leave garnishing to the preferences of your customers as well. With the exception of the requisite citrus wedge and a celery stalk (which doubles as a makeshift swizzle stick), many of the trendier garnishes will take the flavor of the Bloody into a new direction. Clams, capers, anchovies, olives, peppers, onions and even shrimp are things you might make available, but don’t force them on the unsuspecting. Furthermore, too many garnishes clog up the mouth of the glass and make straws necessary—not always the best look.
Because the Bloody Mary is the universal drink of the dawn, it tends to be a crowd pleaser when you’re hosting brunch. It’s a happy circumstance if you don’t fancy spending all your time behind the bar—that’s because the drink is the perfect candidate for building beforehand. Batching Bloody Marys—preparing them in volume in advance—is not only convenient, it makes a more cohesive drink. Just as soups and sauces improve by sitting in the pan after cooking, the ingredients in a Bloody Mary will meld when allowed to stand overnight.
Simply multiply the above proportions to create the volume you anticipate, withholding the vodka. Place in a pitcher or other food-safe container the day before the scheduled festivities and stir. Allow the mixture to sit overnight in the refrigerator. Stir again when ready to serve. If you like, you can perform the rolling process described above, but that should be unnecessary as the mix is now quite cold. Make the vodka, ice and elective ingredients available to guests who can pour their own and you can go back to nursing that hangover.
Four Bloody Good Variations on the Bloody Mary
The neutral nature of vodka befits a drink with such herbal and spicy flavors as a Bloody Mary, which tend to overwhelm the spirit. But just as you can modify the spices that you add, you can also modify the spirit.
Bloody Maria
Swap Tequila for your vodka and you have a Bloody Maria. You can also try mezcal, which is even more likely to make a taste difference with its inherently smoky character.
The Red Snapper
Use gin in place of vodka and the resulting drink is often called a Red Snapper—although that name has been applied to the traditional Bloody Mary among those who find the original name vulgar.
Bloody Bull
If you add beef consommé to your drink you have the Bloody Bull, which is bracing and savory. If you use the beef broth but omit the tomato juice you have a Bull Shot.
Bloody Caesar
Yet another variation is substituting Clamato juice for the tomato juice, called a Bloody Caesar—so named because pasta with clam sauce is Italian.
