The Rolls-Royce cocktail is kind of a classied-up version of an upscale iteration of an already elegant drink, conjugated from the classic (gin) martini and it well-married brother, the Martinez.
"It's basically a very wet martini," says Paul Hletko, founder of FEW Spirits, an Evanston, Illinois gin and whiskey distillery acronymically (and winkingly) named for local maven Frances Elizabeth Willard, who helped found the Women's Christian Temperance Union – one of the forces behind Prohibition.
"Two-to-one is a fantastic ratio of gin to vermouth that really lets the vermouth shine, and then having that split between dry and sweet vermouths gives you fantastic and rich complexity, with that little bit of Benedictine being that really nice herbal add," Hletko told us.
As an interesting corollary, the drink first shows up in the Savoy Cocktail Book, the brainchild of another British/American hybrid: Harry Craddock. Born in the UK, Craddock came of age mixing boozes at New York's famed Knickerbocker and Hoffman House hotels, before abandoning our temperant union to become the best-known bartender at London's American Bar in the Savoy Hote.l An Ur-text of mixologists worldwide, Craddock's "Savoy" it is still in print today.
"It's very possible that Craddock created the Rolls-Royce Cocktail, catering to all the Bright Young Things of London society that congregated at the American Bar," says Phil Brooks, historian of the Rolls-Royce Foundation, an independent not-for-profit dedicated to the preservation of all things Rolls.
"My suspicion, totally unproven, is that he originated the drink in New York and brought it with him to London, as one of the over 200 cocktails he placed on the American Bar's menu. Bright Young Things, be they in London or New York, liked Rolls-Royces and bought them, both before and after World War I. No doubt many in that customer base would have liked a Rolls-Royce Cocktail."
(AutoBlog.com)
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