Our first cocktail story starts with the Tom Collins. We all have those friends that take jokes too far right? Well did you know back in 1874 whole states started to take a joke too far? The story goes that in New York a gentlemen would approach one of his friends and say
“Do you know Tom Collins?” to which the reply would of course reply
“No, why?” the first gentlemen would then try to wind up his counterpart by stating
“you should probably go find him, he keeps saying you’re a thief and calling you names” this would then rile him up and cause him to go off hunting for ‘Tom Collins’ whom unfortunately for him never existed. This was a joke that went viral round New York and Philadelphia back in 1874 and led to scores of people running round hunting for Tom. Eventually one smart bar tender caught wind of this and decided to invent a cocktail named after him so that when people came rushing to the bar asking for ‘Tom Collins’ he would in avertedly have accidentally ordered a cocktail.

The screwdriver was invented by American Oil workers in the Persian gulf in the 1940’s. They decided to make their orange juice more interesting they would start to add vodka to it, however, being at work they didn’t have a spoon to stir it with and therefore used a screwdriver instead. As they also were not supposed to be drinking on the job they also referred to it as a ‘screwdriver’ to hide what they were doing.

Even some of the simplest drinks have interesting back stories. The gin and tonic was created back when British soldiers stationed in colonial India were prescribed tonic water with quinine to help with malaria however it tasted so terrible that the only way to get the soldiers to drink it was to add gin, hence the gin and tonic was born.

This iconic cocktail was invented during a spring break in 1987. A peach schnapps distributor challenged Florida bars to sell the most of their product with the winner receiving a one thousand dollar prize. The winning bar created mixed the liqueur with grenadine, vodka and orange juice and named it sex on the beach in homage to the students. We even have our very own cocktail story with this one. In keeping with our fantastic location we have our very own 'sex on the quay' on our cocktail menu as a playful twist.

During the American prohibition lots of illegal bars known as ‘speakeasies’ popped up. They were named after the women who would try to calm down rowdy customers who were increasing the risk of the bar being found by asking them to ‘speak easy’.
Cocktails were popularised during this time due to the ease of disguising the alcohol in a drink. Gin and vodka became incredibly popular spirits for use in cocktails as they were easier to make illegally and would not have an effect on the colour of the drinks.