FUN COCKTAIL FACTS!

By Aditi Malhotra

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We all love the word ‘cocktail’ and keep hearing it every now and then, but how about digging a little deep into some fun facts related to cocktails?

Did you know ‘Punch’ was like a precursor to cocktails? It was invented in India 1500 years ago. Made from sugar, spices, water, citrus, and arrack, punch came into existence much before modern-day cocktails. While the United States is often credited with the invention of the modern cocktail, it was Italy where it all started. A treatise written in 77 A.D. by Roman Emperor Nero’s physician hinted at preparing medicines that included wines, alcohol, and bitters. The Sazerac invented in 1838 by apothecary owner Antoine Peychaud in New Orleans is known to be the oldest cocktail ever. However, the ‘old-fashioned’ takes the place of the most popular cocktail worldwide because of its simplicity, mass appeal and easy availability of whiskey In India, it’s the Mojito.

Diamond Is Forever Martini featuring a onecarat diamond alongside Absolut Elyx Vodka at the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo is considered the most expensive cocktail worldwide. This martini roughly costs 19k USD or 15 65 lakhs INR approx.

A hotel in the Thai capital, Bangkok set a Guinness World Record by stirring up the world's largest Negroni cocktail, with more than 630 litres of the bitter Italian drink. The Commonwealth cocktail has been sought after as the most complicated and difficult cocktail for any bartender to put together as it contains 71 ingredients to honour the 71 countries that participated in the 20th Commonwealth games.

Sheldon Wiley who made 18 cocktails in one minute created a World Record in 2013 for making the most number of cocktails in a minute and also managed to make 1,905 cocktails in an hour in 2014

While Gethal Durairaj Lingesh of Tamil Nadu, India, set a record for making and displaying the maximum number of cocktails in one minute. He made 21 cocktails in one minute at Radisson Blu, Egmore, Chennai on September 29, 2021

London has the highest number of bars in the world and in India, Bengaluru tops the list. No doubt it is called the ‘pub culture’ capital of India.

Can you imagine, 185,000 margaritas are consumed hourly in the USA?

According to the latest National Family Health Survey 5 report, Arunachal Pradesh in India has the highest proportion of both men (53%) and women (24%) who drink alcohol. While globally speaking, Latvia averages 12.6 litres of alcohol consumed per person annually

These surely were some cool facts, weren’t they? Do let me know how many of these you already knew.