One Drink To Rule Them All
The Cosmopolitan is a world-famous drink that was made iconic with its inclusion in the popular TV series such as ‘Sex and the City’. But who invented the Cosmopolitan drink and what is the Cosmopolitan drink history?
In the late nineteenth century a cocktail known as the Daisy emerged as a delicious drink that was loved for its ability to modify harsher flavors of booze. The classic recipe called for spirit, sweetener and citrus, which is similar to the structure of the Cosmo – this recipe is now known as the classic “sour family” recipe structure – but vodka wasn’t a spirit used much in cocktails like this back then, mostly because it already had little flavor to begin with and the citrus used was not cranberry, because cranberry isn’t a citrus. That being said, it’s possible that this proven drink structure is the foundation for which the Cosmopolitan is based.
Toby Checchini had been a bartender in New York City since the 1980s. He was in his mid-20s and working at Tribeca’s The Odeon when he was served a pink cocktail which had been growing in popularity through San Fransisco’s gay district throughout the 1980s. Called ‘The Cosmopolitan’, he found this drink to be ‘super cute and pretty, but disgusting’. The original cosmo recipe used a mixture of grenadine, rose’s lime, and vodka. Toby kept the name but decided to make his own version of the original cosmo recipe, and a legendary drink was born.
Toby Checchini’s cosmo recipe uses Cointreau Triple Sec, Absolute Citreon vodka, which had been newly launched and was a massive craze at the time of his creation, cranberry juice and a splash of lime. He states that these specific variants of the ingredients are required, otherwise the end result is not the same. It became the staff drink in the Odeon, and gradually customers began ordering it and it grew in popularity. Madonna was photographed drinking the drink in The Rainbow Room, and this seal of approval meant the drink’s cult status was born.
The Cosmopolitan’s, and Checchini’s, success really came with the Cosmopolitan’s inclusion in ‘Sex and the City’. This came from the producers of the show looking for ‘the’ New York drink to include in the show, and the famous Odeon was cited as ‘The’ New York bar, and so the producers looked there for inspiration. Checchini considers The Cosmopolitan an albatross and in the late 1990s and around the turn of the Millenium the Toby Checchini Cosmopolitan recipe topped the list of drinks in bars and restaurants across the country.
Toby was confused to find around this time that as the popularity of his drink increased, the quality decreased, and bartenders hated it’s creator for it due to it’s wide success. Esquire said of the cocktail: “Like Celebration, Florida (the Disney town), it (the Cosmopolitan) has the appearance of tradition with none of the workmanship. The purpose of a cocktail is to take the pronounced, even pungent, flavor of a liquor and, through careful blending with acids, aromatics, and essences, transform it into something new and hitherto-untasted. Vodka, though, has no flavor. If a cocktail is alchemy, this is just mixing.””So you’re the asshole that invented the cosmo!”, says every bartender who had to bear mixing a hundred cosmos every single night. He also found that bartenders would scoff at him for using flavoured vodka in his recipe. Although Toby considers the cosmopolitan as his albatross, the cosmopolitan has born fruit (cranberries to be exact, no pun intended) into an unbreakable legacy for the craft.
Toby has also found further success since creating the drink he considers his albatross. He went from Bar Tender to Bar Owner, and in 1998 he opened Passerby in Chelsea, which was well-loved and largely populated. This was unfortunately forced to close in 2008 as the landlord wouldn’t renew the lease, and Toby cites the week the bar closed as one of the worst of his life. He now owns The Long Island Bar, which is built into a former silver sided diner in Brooklyn and is close to where he lives in Cobble Hill. His latest venture occupies a former diner on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood. Long Island Bar’s unpretentious and low-key vibe, combined with their award-winning cocktails and snacks, quickly gained them a cult following. Long Island Bar was named the third “Absolute Best Cocktail Bar in New York” by Grub Street, earned a nod from Condé Nast Traveler as one of “Our Favorite Bars Around the World,” was recognized as an Esquire Magazine “Best Bars in America,” and was dubbed “Best Cocktail Bar in New York” by The Village Voice in 2013 and 2014.He has written on Mixology for The New York Times and in 2004 wrote about his iconic drink and it’s creation in a book, ‘Cosmopolitan’.