The Moscow Mule’s most well-known element isn’t an ingredient, it’s the copper mug that historically holds the easy cocktail of vodka, ginger beer, and lime. It’s the mug’s burnished sheen that set the drink aside within the early days of the cocktail revival when vodka-based drinks have been thought of passé. 

The mug is the very purpose the Moscow Mule exists within the first place. The place this started is up for debate, nevertheless. 

Whereas some folks hint the post-Prohibition cocktail’s origins to Los Angeles, others insist the drink was created in New York Metropolis.  

“It type of comes off as a Biggie vs. Tupac, East Coast vs. West Coast type of argument,” says Gina Hoover, bartender and marketing consultant for CURE in New Orleans. “However I’m not shocked in any respect why the argument exists. When you ask an American to call 5 drinks, 90% will in all probability title the Moscow Mule as one of many 5,” she says. “When you’re a metropolis, and a drink has that type of energy, you’d naturally need to take credit score for it.”

There are shared traits to every metropolis’s story. Each pin the drink’s creation to 1941, a comparatively trendy date in comparison with different cocktails with convoluted beginnings. In addition they stake declare to a number of the identical gamers, together with a struggling-at-the-time vodka model that’s now a family title. The theories half methods from right here.

New York: Three guys stroll right into a bar…

In keeping with the New York principle, the Moscow Mule stems from Midtown Manhattan’s Chatham Lodge. 

A Los Angeles-based beverage government named John “Jack” Morgan was on the town to advertise his personal Cock ‘n’ Bull ginger beer, a product that shared a reputation with the Hollywood bar he additionally operated. 

He was hanging out with a few trade people — John Martin, president of the now-defunct G.F. Heublein & Brothers distillery and distributor, and Rudolph Kunett, president of Hublein’s vodka division, Smirnoff. After a few drinks, the trio puzzled what would occur in the event that they mixed vodka, ginger beer, and a squeeze of lime juice. Deliciousness ensued.

They named their creation the Moscow Mule. Shortly thereafter, they bought 500 copper mugs embossed with the phrase “Little Moscow.”

Los Angeles: Decide one

There are two Los Angeles origin tales to contemplate. 

Morgan and Martin present up as within the first account. As an alternative of Kunett, they’re joined by Sophie Berezinski, a Russian lady residing in Los Angeles, struggling to seek out patrons for the two,000 stable copper mugs she designed. 

The story goes that someday, she stumbled upon the Cock ‘n Bull bar, the place Morgan and Martin have been hanging out and making an attempt to determine tips on how to transfer their ginger beer and vodka, respectively. The trio met, brainstormed, and the drink was born. 

The second principle could also be extra logical because it comes straight from Cock ‘n’ Bull’s head bartender, Wes Value, and could also be a well-known tactic to anybody who’s had expertise working a bar. 

In a narrative revealed within the Wall Avenue Journal in 2007, this new principle arose with a quote from Value claiming that he had invented the drink to attempt to clear ginger beer bottles out of the Cock ‘n’ Bull’s basement. 

“I simply needed to wash out the basement,” mentioned Value. “I used to be making an attempt to do away with a variety of lifeless inventory. It caught on like wildfire.”

Whereas this comes near being proof, it’s nonetheless only a declare with nothing concrete to again it up.

Which one’s proper?

The drink first confirmed up in print in 1942, when Inside Hollywood gossip columnist Edith Gwynn talked about the Moscow Mule because the “craze within the film colony.”  

An account of the Moscow Mule’s New York origin story from influential meals author Clementine Paddleford would seem within the New York Herald Tribune in 1948. Nevertheless, Paddleford’s piece mentions a quote from Morgan and references how Los Angeles stored the drink alive after the drink stalled. It’s believable that Gwynn’s proclamation might be in regards to the drink’s resuscitation as a substitute of its creation.  

Such messiness is anticipated relating to old-school drinks. 

“It’s the identical with just about any older cocktail,” says Brynn Smith, bar director for Bar Subsequent Door in West Hollywood. “You’re by no means going to seek out something that’s the equal of somebody going ‘Hear ye, hear ye, right here’s the origin story.’”

Whereas the drink’s beginnings are technically up for debate, Los Angeles nonetheless has a significantly better declare to the Moscow Mule’s origin story. That is largely as a result of drink itself, which has extra in frequent with the fruity, refreshing drinks of Los Angeles’ then-fledgling tiki bar scene than the spirit-forward cocktails sometimes created within the Massive Apple.  

“If you take a look at the type of the Moscow Mule, it is not sensible that it might originate in New York,” Smith says. “A narrative in regards to the creation of a drink with vodka, ginger beer, and lime matches significantly better in Los Angeles.” (It ought to be famous that Bar Subsequent Door is throughout the road from the place Morgan’s Cock & Bull as soon as stood.)

In fact, the Moscow Mule’s refreshing deliciousness supplies the legs wanted for the controversy to proceed. 

This brings the dialog again to the copper mug. Its capacity to maintain a drink chilly longer than glass made it a vital a part of the drink for many years. Today, trendy strategies like utilizing higher high quality ice and chilled elements make the drink much less depending on the mugs. Bar Subsequent Door, for instance, serves their Mules in a glass. Nonetheless, there may be respect for the mug’s function within the drink’s rise to prominence.  

“General, the mug as of late is a present pony,” says Hoover. “However traditionally, it’s the explanation the drink works.”

That’s true whether or not the drink originated on the West or the East Coast. Nevertheless it was seemingly the West Coast. Sorry, New York.