From Bucket of Blood to Bloody Mary: 8 Iconic Cocktails That Once Had Different Names

Ever heard of the bands Tony Flow and The Majestic Masters Of Mayhem or The New Yardbirds? What about the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Led Zeppelin? Most people are familiar with the latter two, but the former names were actually the prototypical monikers for both groups.

No matter how much something has going for it, a good name can make or break its success. The world of mixed drinks is, of course, no exception to the rule. Fine-tuning a cocktail’s taste and appearance is only half the battle. Landing on a catchy, memorable name is part two.

Naturally, many drinks throughout history have gone through both recipe and name changes over the years before they found fame with the general drinking public. Here are eight examples of such cocktails that struggled early on, but later hit the big time after being renamed.

The Bloody Mary
Original Name: The Bucket of Blood

There are several conflicting theories regarding the origins of the world-famous brunch staple and “hair of the dog” cocktail, but by many accounts, it was invented by bartender Fernand “Pete” Petiot at Paris’s The New York Bar in the early 1920s. Allegedly, the first iteration — a mix of vodka, canned tomato juice, and several spices — was named the Bucket of Blood by visiting American entertainer Roy Barton as a nod to a Chicago bar of the same name. A decade later, Petiot moved to NYC to run the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel, bringing the drink along with him — although there it went under a different name: the Red Snapper. According to Esquire, other bars around the city started making the cocktail and calling it the Bloody Mary. However, the first in-print appearances of the drink with this name didn’t appear until the late 1930s, notably in a 1939 Smirnoff ad in which entertainer George Jessel claims to have named the drink after his friend Mary Geraghty — further muddying the cocktail’s origin story. Regardless, the new name stuck.

The Espresso Martini
Original Name: The Vodka Espresso

The Espresso Martini had not one, but two different names before it got its current title. When the late Dick Bradsell first invented the drink one night at London’s Soho Brasserie in 1983, he originally dubbed it the Vodka Espresso. From there, the name went from rather boring to clunky as hell when Bradsell rebranded it as the Pharmaceutical Stimulant. Then, he finally settled on the Espresso Martini, and the name stuck. Ever since, the Espresso Martini has proven to have some serious staying power — despite many bartenders’ disdain for the cocktail.

The French 75
Original Name: Soixante-Quinze

The famous gin– and Champagne-laced cocktail gets its name from the Canon de 75 modèle 1897 field gun used by French forces during World War I. However, it would be a few years after its initial creation that the drink would get the moniker — and recipe — we know today. The first published spec for the cocktail appeared in a 1915 issue of The Washington Herald under the name Soixante-Quinze (French for “75”), and consisted of gin, Applejack, grenadine, and lemon juice. It then showed up in Robert Vermeire’s 1922 book “Cocktails: How to Mix Them” as the 75 Cocktail with Calvados instead of Applejack, accompanied by a blurb attributing the drink to Henry Tépé of Henry’s Bar in Paris. And in 1927, the first written recipe that lines up with today’s standard spec appeared under the full French 75 name in Judge Jr.’s cocktail book, “Here’s How!”

Gin Basil Smash
Original Name: The Gin Pesto

Joerg Meyer, German bartender and owner of Hamburg bar Le Lion, got his first kernel of inspiration for the Gin Basil Smash while trying Dale DeGroff’s Whiskey Smash at NYC’s now-shuttered Pegu Club in 2007. When he returned home, he found himself flipping through a recipe booklet by French gin brand G’Vine and stumbling upon a cocktail that called for a basil garnish. Meyer hit the lab armed with a bouquet of basil and, using Degroff’s template, he created the gin- and basil-based concoction now known as the Gin Basil Smash. However, he originally listed it on the Le Lion menu as the Gin Pesto. “I thought it was really clever to call it Gin Pesto but [our regulars] really hated the name, so I changed the name,” Meyer told VinePair on an episode of the “Cocktail College” podcast. The new, arguably more straightforward name stuck. Since then, some bartenders have cheekily referred to the cocktail as “Meyer’s Curse” due to the laborious muddling involved in its prep.

The Hemingway Daiquiri
Original Name: The Papa Doble

What began as a quick bathroom break eventually led to the invention of one of the world’s most iconic Daiquiri riffs. As the story goes, Ernest Hemingway stopped by Havana’s El Floridita bar one day in the early 1930s to use the restroom, and ordered a Daiquiri after hearing guests gushing over the bar’s cocktails. After sinking his first drink, Hemingway asked the bartender, Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, for another one with “less sugar and more rum.” The resulting concoction was essentially a double shot of rum with lime juice, and Vert christened it the Papa Doble — a nod to Hemingway’s nickname while in Havana and the double shot of rum in the cocktail. Eventually, Vert swapped the lime for grapefruit juice and added Maraschino liqueur into the mix, creating what is now known as the Hemingway Daiquiri, or the Hemingway Special in some circles.

The Old Fashioned
Original Name: The Whiskey Cocktail

True to its name, the Old Fashioned is one of the oldest bona fide cocktails in history. After “The Balance and Columbian Repository of Hudson, New York” officially defined the term as “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters” in 1806, several drinks began popping up at bars all over the U.S. labeled with their base spirit followed by the word “cocktail.” One of those was the Whiskey Cocktail. By the latter half of the 19th century, bartenders were starting to add tweaks and embellishments to the cocktail template, creating drinks like the Improved Whiskey Cocktail, but some nostalgic rebels yearned for their simpler previous iterations. As such, George Kappeler’s 1895 book “Modern American Drinks” published a recipe that mirrors that of the original Whiskey Cocktail under the name Old Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail. Over time, the latter half of the name eventually got dropped, leaving the cocktail with its current moniker.

The Pornstar Martini
Original Name: The Maverick Martini

The playful, tongue-in-cheek, and somewhat sassy Pornstar Martini was conceived back in 2002. The late Douglas Ankrah was in Cape Town working on a cocktail book and gearing up to open a new bar in London when the idea to combine vodka, vanilla, passion fruit, and Prosecco suddenly came to him on a morning walk. Initially, he named his creation the Maverick Martini after a local strip club called the Mavericks Gentlemen’s Club that he frequented during his off time. When he returned to London and opened the now-shuttered bar Townhouse, Ankrah put the drink on the opening menu, but with a more provocative title: the Pornstar Martini. Allegedly, the drink was an immediate hit with the clientele, and it soon traveled to Townhouse’s sister bar LAB (also now-shuttered) across town. As Ankrah told drinks trade publication The Buyer in 2017, the reason for naming the cocktail as such was simple: “I called it Pornstar because I thought it was something that a Pornstar would drink.”

The Art of Choke
Alternative Name: Kyle’s After Pork

Among the many modern classics born at Chicago’s recently shuttered The Violet Hour, few were as unorthodox for the time as Kyle Davidson’s Art of Choke. It has a split base of light rum and Cynar — a bitter, artichoke-based amaro — and is traditionally stirred despite its inclusion of fresh lime juice. Davidson first created the drink in 2008, and although it debuted as the Art of Choke, he began serving it as a batched digestif under the moniker Kyle’s After Pork when he took it to the nearby Chicago restaurant the Publican. In 2009, the cocktail appeared under the Art of Choke name in Maksym Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal’s book “Rogue Cocktails,” propelling its popularity outside Chicago’s city limits. Admittedly, Kyle’s After Pork wasn’t the original name, but the fact that it had two names during its infancy is an interesting blip in the history of the cocktail’s nomenclature.

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