Whiskey Sour

Yarrr, sour drinks and sailors, that's MY territory. Whiskey Sour's actually got the same scurvy backstory as the Mojito. Way back in the mid-1700s, British sailors started mixing citrus juice into their alcohol rations to choke down their vitamin C without complaining. Vitamin C, scurvy, rum, whiskey — it's all the same story with a different bottle! Yarrr!

The first WRITTEN recipe appears in 1860s, in Jerry Thomas' "The Bartender's Guide". But some say the earliest actual MENTION of the name "Whiskey Sour" is from 1870, in a Wisconsin newspaper. There's also a competing claim that a former ship steward named Elliot Staub invented it in 1872 at a bar in Iquique — which was part of Peru at the time. Three different dates, three different countries.

Whatever the real timeline, the drink's dead simple — whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup. Somebody later started adding a splash of red wine on top for the "New York Sour" twist, and the thing got so beloved it survived Prohibition and now has its own holiday — National Whiskey Sour Day, August 25th (USA). To scurvy and survival! Yarrr!