It's been said that in New York, at least, prohibition, that nationwide ban on alcohol sales

beginning in 1920 and lasting for the next 13 years, well, it didn't really curb drinking

so much. It just made it all a whole lot more fun. Secret smoky speakeasies, the famed concoctions called collectively bathtub gin, and most

of all, the carefree rule-breaking spirit that infused the jazz age all gave the 1920s an

aura of freedom from those restricted, corseted, late Victorian times.

Many people have an idea that it was into the 1930s and 40s, once Prohibition had been lifted,

that all that led to the great grand era of the cocktail with sleek, silver, art deco bars, impeccably dressed bartenders with

slicked back hair and movie star looks, and then of course there were the stars and starlets

themselves, for whom a long cigarette holder and a perfectly blended cocktail in a crystal

glass were the ultimate props on and off screen.

While cocktails and elegant ones were certainly popular well into the 1960s,

the story of how it all came to be is a different story from what some may think.

The truth, actually, is that the golden age of cocktails,

at least the first golden age, came about 50 years before in the world we call the Gilded Age.

Some of the most famous cocktails from the Manhattan to the martini, and even the justly named old-fashioned,

all had their roots in the bars of New York's private men's clubs

and saloons of hotels and restaurants like Delmonicos.

This episode takes a look at the history of that golden age of Gilded Age cocktails.

It sorts some fact

from fiction and offers up

a golden age of history

in a glass.

...