The Stinger

, a notoriously intoxicating mixture of brandy and white crème de menthe, is the king of after-dinner cocktails. It was not an instant sensation. Although it is no longer as fashionable as it was during the twentieth century, it still retains something of its reputation as a top-hat-and-tails drink. It first earned that reputation in the decade before Prohibition. It did not hurt that millionaire playboy Reginald Vanderbilt (1880–1925) always used to shake them up for his friends—always with a dash of absinthe—at the bar in his New York mansion. It is quite unlikely, though, that he invented it, as was claimed in the 1920s: the drink first appears in 1890, when he was ten.At the end of that year, Herman, the head bartender at New York’s Hotel Bartholdi, introduced the Bartholdi Cocktail, made from two fashionable after-dinner tipples, cognac and crème de menthe, shaken together with ice and finished with a spray of lemon oil (his version used green crème de menthe, the white style not yet being widely available in America). The combination was rich and cool, potent and refreshing, and it endured, although the name did not. Over the next two decades, it surfaced under various names: the Judge, the Brant, the Ice Trust Cocktail. Sometimes it had the twist, sometimes bitters, sometimes a dash of absinthe.

In 1913 it finally hit it big, this time as the Stinger, the name most likely taken from a boxing term for a quick jab to the head. With its catchy name and with proponents such as Vanderbilt (it is possible he had something to do with reintroducing it and naming it, although credit for that may also go to James B. Regan of New York’s Hotel Knickerbocker), it became quite fashionable, the sort of thing drunk by clubmen and debutantes and their ilk. It retained that cachet for the next fifty or sixty years, finally petering out in the 1980s. By then, it had spawned numerous variations, most of them aimed at replacing the expensive cognac with some other, cheaper spirit. Unfortunately, the success of the drink depends on using an old, deep-flavored, and mellow spirit, for which the other options are practically as expensive as the cognac. The declining ages of affordable cognacs may explain why the Stinger has not flourished in the modern era, although it does have its proponents. See cognac.

Unlike most drinks that are made only from spirituous ingredients, the Stinger is always shaken, to ensure maximum coldness and extra dilution. It is also often served frappé, in a cocktail glass full of cracked or crushed ice. Proportions of spirit to liqueur vary, and have always varied, although many believe the ideal is three parts of the former to one of the latter (a proportion first hit on by John Applegreen in 1913). Made thus, the Stinger justifies the dangerous old saying Dale DeGroff is fond of quoting: “What goes with a Stinger? Another Stinger.” See DeGroff, Dale.

*Recipe: Shake 60 ml cognac or Armagnac, VSOP or older, and 20 ml white crème de menthe (preferably French) and strain into chilled coupe, which may be filled with finely cracked ice.

Applegreen, John. “The Book of Smiles.” Hotel Monthly, July 1913, 8.

Bee, John [John Badcock]. Sportsman’s Slang: A New Dictionary, London: John Bee, 1825, 166.

Converse, Thelma Morgan. “Behind the Curtains with the 400.” Indianapolis Sunday Star Magazine, July 8, 1923.

“Life in the Hotels.” New York Evening Telegram, January 15, 1891, 4.

McIntyre, O. O. “New York Day by Day.” Buffalo Evening News*, June 11, 1935, 20.

By: David Wondrich