Cooking Lesson #907: Friday's Happy Hour Gibson

…from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour Bar

How you doin’?  The exact origin of the Gibson cocktail is unclear, with  numerous popular tales and theories about its genesis. According to one theory, it was invented by Charles Dana Gibson, who created the popular Gibson Girl illustrations. Supposedly, he challenged Charley Connolly, the bartender of the Players Club in New York City, to improve upon a martini. As the story goes, Connolly simply substituted a trio of pickled onion for the olive and named the drink after the Charley.

Another version now considered more probable recounts a 1968 interview with a relative of a prominent San Francisco businessman named Walter D. K. Gibson, who claimed to have created the drink at the Bohemian Club in the 1890s. Charles Clegg, when asked about it by Herb Caen, also said it was from San Francisco, not New York. Other reporting supports this theory. Edward Townsend, former vice president of the Bohemian Club, is credited with the first mention of the Gibson in print, in a humorous essay he wrote for the New York World published in 1898.

Yet another theory is that the Gibson after whom the drink was named was a popular California onion farmer, as seen in the publication. During the winter of 1852 and '53, snow fell in Onion Valley, California to the depth of twenty-five feet. Even the towns of Gibsonville, Seventy-Six, Pine Grove, Whiskey Diggings, and several others where people had nothing to do but drink, found their martini of the day was a bust without olives so they substituted pickled onion for the olives.

Other stories of the drink's origins are boundless like many of the other origins of legendary cocktails so take them for what they’re worth and just enjoy the gin.

My Gibson is made with gin (or vodka) and dry vermouth, and is often garnished with a pickled onion. In its modern incarnation, it is considered a cousin of the ubiquitous martini, distinguished mostly by garnishing with an onion instead of an olive.

Ingredients 
2-1/2 ounces gin or vodka (I prefer Hendrick’s Gin)
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
Garnish: 3 pickled cocktail onions
 
Directions

1. Add the gin (or vodka) and dry vermouth into a mixing glass with ice and stir until well-chilled. Do not shake or you will “bruise” the gin.
2. Strain into a frozen stemmed martini cocktail glass.
3. Garnish with skewered cocktail onions.

ChefSecret:  My gin of choice is Hendricks. Hendrick's uses a blend of spirits produced from a Carter-Head Still (1948), of which there are only a few in the world, and a small pot still, built in 1860 by Bennett, Sons & Shears. Both have been restored to working order after being bought at auction in the 1960s by the former William Grant Life President, Charles Gordon. The two stills produce strikingly different styles of gin due to their different construction and methods of distillation and the blend makes the difference.

Quip of the Day:  A man and his wife are at a restaurant and the husband keeps staring at a drunken lady swigging her gin at a nearby table. His wife asks, “Do you know her?” “Yes,” sighs the husband. “She’s my ex-wife. She took to drinking right after we divorced seven years ago, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.” “My God!” says the wife. “Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?!”
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