Virgin Mary

Bloody Mary

A Bloody Mary is 45ml of vodka, 90ml of tomato juice, 15ml of fresh lemon juice and two dashes of Worcestershire sauce, with Tabasco, celery salt and black pepper to taste, stirred gently with ice and strained over fresh ice in a double rocks glass, with a celery stick and, if you like, a lemon wedge. About 1.8 UK units. Worcestershire sauce often contains anchovies and celery salt contains celery, so treat the drink as carrying fish and celery allergens. The measures are the IBA’s, and so is the instruction to season to taste. Three dashes of Tabasco, a pinch of celery salt and a few turns of pepper make a sound starting point. Fernand Petiot is the name most often attached to it. The Oxford Companion finds no contemporary evidence for his claim or for George Jessel’s, and first finds vodka, tomato juice and the name together in a New York column of November 1939.

Michelada

A Michelada is a 330ml bottle of cold Mexican lager poured in stages over 25ml of fresh lime juice, four dashes of hot sauce and three of Worcestershire sauce, on ice in a salt-rimmed highball, with a lime wedge. About 1.5 UK units from a lager at 4.5% ABV. Worcestershire sauce is made with anchovies and lager is brewed from barley, so the drink contains fish and gluten. The Oxford Companion says the origins are murky. One plausible theory derives the name from the Spanish for “my cold blonde”, chelada being a Spanish adaptation of the English “chilled”, and an oft-cited account has Michel Esper creating the drink at the Club Deportivo Potosino in San Luis Potosí in the 1970s. The beer carries the seasoning, so a pale, plain lager is the right choice. Sauces go in the glass first, then ice, then the beer down the side.

Virgin Colada

A Virgin Colada is 120ml of fresh pineapple juice, 45ml of cream of coconut and 15ml of fresh lime juice, blended with a cup of crushed ice for 10 to 15 seconds and poured into a hurricane glass, with a pineapple wedge and a cherry. It is alcohol-free. It is the Piña Colada without its 50ml of white rum. The Caribe Hilton’s own history page says its bartender Ramón “Monchito” Marrero created that drink in 1954 and that it became the official drink of Puerto Rico in 1978, though Difford’s Guide records rival claims. Taking the rum out removes dryness as well as alcohol. So the pineapple goes up to fill the glass and the lime moves from a few optional drops to 15ml, to stop the drink tasting only sweet. Cream of coconut, the sweetened kind sold in tins, still decides it.

Shirley Temple

A Shirley Temple is an alcohol-free drink of ginger ale and grenadine: 150ml ginger ale in an ice-filled highball, with 15ml grenadine poured in last so it sinks, and a maraschino cherry on top. A squeeze of lime is optional and makes it less sweet. There is no alcohol in it. Tasting Table, a secondary source, lists the Brown Derby, Chasen’s and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel among the places that claim it. NPR quotes Temple placing its creation in the 1930s at the Brown Derby in Hollywood, and Tasting Table has her telling NPR in the mid-1980s that she thought such drinks saccharine and icky. Tasting Table dates her legal action against a bottled soda using her name to 1988. Her complaint is fair, and fixable. A ginger ale with some bite and a grenadine made from pomegranate turn it from a glass of sugar into a drink with ginger heat and tart fruit.