Dale DeGroff (born September 21, 1948, Rhode Island), also known as the King of Cocktails or King Cocktail, is an American bartender and author.

The New York Times in 2015 called DeGroff 'one of the world’s foremost cocktail experts', and wrote that his book 'The Craft of the Cocktail' is considered an essential bartending reference.^[1] From 1987 to 1999 DeGroff rose to prominence in the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in New York City. He is the founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, and a partner and consultant in the Beverage Alcohol Resource (BAR) group.^[2][3]

Master Mixologist Dale DeGroff developed his extraordinary mixology techniques and talent while tending bar at great establishments, most notably, New York’s famous Rainbow Room. It was there in the late 1980’s where he pioneered a gourmet approach to recreating the great classic cocktails, with an accent on utilizing only fresh ingredients. Dale DeGroff is the godfather of the cocktail industry and mentor to three generations of mixologists and bartenders. Regarded as the “essential bartending guide” by the New York Times, his book The Craft of the Cocktail, which he published in 2002, has influenced the entire cocktail and hospitality industry.

The James Beard Foundation awarded DeGroff the 2009 Wine & Spirits Professional Award, and in 2015 inducted him into the Who's Who in Food & Beverage in America. He received the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from Nightclub & Bar Magazine, the 2008 Tales of the Cocktail Lifetime Achievement Award, and along with his BAR partners, the 2007 Cheers Beverage Industry Innovator of the Year.

He is the author of two best-selling cocktail books: The Essential Cocktail, winner of the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail Spirit Award for Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book, and The Craft of the Cocktail, winner of the 2003 IACP Julia Child Award in the First Book category.

In 2005 he founded The Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, an eclectic collection of cocktail artifacts, books, and memorabilia.

Books[edit]

• 2002: The Craft of the Cocktail: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master Bartender, with 500 Recipes . Clarkson Potter. ISBN978-0609608753
• 2009: The Essential Cocktail (Random House)

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

• James Beard Awards, 2009 [1]

References[edit]

1. ^Luongo, Michael T. (2015-06-30). 'Dale DeGroff on the Origin of Cocktails, Katrina and the Rainbow Room'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
2. ^Feuer, Alan (2000-06-25). 'NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BENDING ELBOWS; A Barkeep Who Practices the Art of the Potable'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
3. ^Grimes, William (1999-06-04). 'Diner's Journal'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-12-09.

The Cosmopolitan is one of those cocktails that has had various incarnations through the ages - some of them, quite probably, independent of one another. During the 1990s, the familiar blend of cranberry, citrus and vodka was one of the most popular cocktails in New York and London.

Cosmopolitan recipes & riffs

Our own Cosmopolitan recipe uses equal parts vodka and triple sec with more cranberry juice than most. The extra fruitiness from the increased triple sec and cranberry means this recipe also works best with unflavoured vodka so is useful if citrus flavoured vodka is not to hand. Follows some of the best-known Cosmo recipes with a link to more at the bottom of the page.
Dale DeGroff’s recipe
1934 recipe
No added sugar & low-calorie recipe
Grand Cosmopolitan (with Grand Marnier)
Rude Cosmopolitan (with tequila)
Neal’s Barbados Cosmopolitan (with rum)
London Cosmopolitan (with gin)
Brazilian Cosmopolitan (with cachaça)
More Cosmopolitan recipes

Origin & Story

The first reference to a Cosmopolitan cocktail appears in the 1934 book Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars. This book features five very different cocktails named Cosmopolitan, but the following recipe, shown in the book as an example of a Daisy, includes triple sec and is very similar to today's Cosmopolitan, only with lemon in place of lime, gin in place of vodka and raspberry syrup in place of cranberry.
“Jigger Gordon’s Gin
2 Dashes Cointreau
Juice of One Lemon
Teaspoon Raspberry Syrup
Glass N0.4 [3.5oz goblet] Shake and strain.”

Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, four of the five Cosmopolitans in Pioneers of Mixing have a red/pink appearance, the one above due to raspberry syrup. This pale pink cocktail is not a bad drink (see 1934 Cosmopolitan for recipe and photograph).

Another candidate as an ancestor of the modern-day Cosmopolitan is the Harpoon Cocktail, a drink promoted by Ocean Spray during the 1960s. A 1968 bottle label from Ocean Spray's archives lists the Harpoon as a 'new cocktail' with a recipe specifying 2 ounces Ocean Spray cranberry and 1 ounce vodka or light rum served 'over the rocks or tall with soda'. Ocean Spray's recipe also suggests adding an optional splash of lime or lemon. In 1970, the company updated its recipe to also list gin as a possible base spirit.

Bartender and author Cheryl Charming (AKA Miss Charming), who has researched the origins of the Cosmopolitan, discounts both of the above in her 2018 The Cocktail Companion, asserting “that two bartenders, at two different times (fourteen years apart), in two different cities (1800 miles apart) created a cocktail with almost identical ingredients and named it the same name—Cosmopolitan. These bartenders are Neal Murray and Cheryl Cook. Two New York City bartenders claim to be the first to have upgraded the Cosmopolitan recipe by using quality ingredients, however, only one of them has been credited. Their names are Melissa Huffsmith and Toby Cecchini. And then there is Dale “King Cocktail” DeGroff who independently upgraded the Cosmopolitan.”

Cheryl Cook

Cheryl Cook has a well-supported claim to have invented the Cosmopolitan Cocktail while head bartender at The Strand on Washington Avenue, South Beach, Miami. She based her drink on the newly available Absolut Citron vodka which launched in 1989 and added a splash of triple sec, a dash of Rose's lime and, in her own words, 'just enough cranberry to make it oh so pretty in pink'. (A popular phrase at the time from the 1986 film Pretty in Pink.)

Cheryl, helped by The Strand’s owner, Gary Farmer, named her new drink after a March 1989 copy of Cosmopolitan Magazine which featured an article on The Strand and the hostess titled “The Maître d’ is a Ms.” The magazine had a pink cover and the hostess proudly showed the issue to everyone who came into the restaurant.

To quote Miss Charming’s book, Cook served many celebrities and had many stories. She vividly remembers serving Madonna and Sandra Bernhard—many times. When the Cosmopolitan went what today we would call “viral” from Sex and the City, Cook just assumed that the show’s costume designers, Patricia Field and Rebecca Weinburg were responsible for introducing the cocktail to the writers because Field and Weinburg were regulars of hers.

Neal Murray

Encouraged by a couple of college mates, in 1975, while studying political science at the University of Minnesota, Neal Murray (then aged 24) took his first bartending position at the Cork ’n Cleaver Steakhouse in Golden Valley. After learning the key cocktail recipes of the day, he soon noticed a change in cocktail trends from gin to vodka – particularly as base spirits in the Gimlet and Kamikaze shooter. Hence, in Autumn 1975 he tried combined a Cape Cod and Kamikaze, adding Leroux triple sec from the Kamikaze to the Cape Codder’s vodka (Gordons), cranberry (Ocean Spray) and lime (Rose’s) to make a shaken drink which he strained in a cocktail glass.

Murray had initially been turned down from the job at the Steakhouse “because he was black” and this is key to the naming of his Cape Cod and Kamikaze riff. When he made the pink drink, a regular asked the name and Murray replied, [to quote Miss Charming’s The Cocktail Companion] “I just thought it needed a little color,” making a joke about how he was hired. The regular said, “How cosmopolitan!” and the Cosmopolitan was born.

In 1979, Murray moved to study psychology at San Francisco State University and in 1981, after working at a couple of other establishments, started as a waiter at the Elite Café (2049 Fillmore Street). Here he taught the bartender there, Michael Brennan (now a noted artist), to make his Cosmopolitan cocktail and started recommending it to customers and the drink became a hit. As part of her research, Miss Charming tracked down fellow workers and customers of Elite Café who attest to this.

In 1985, Murray was hired by impresario Douglas 'BIX' Biederbeck as a bartender at San Francisco’s famous Fog City Diner. Here switched the vodka in his Cosmo for Mt. Gay Rum to create a “Barbados Cosmopolitan”. When Douglas opened his BIX restaurant in 1988 he put Neal’s Barbados Cosmopolitan on the menu and in his 2008 book Boxology says “We were the first West Coast restaurant to re-spark the current Martini boom. It’s a little hard to imagine that, only twenty years ago, the white-wine spritzer, gin and tonic, and occasional sweet drink were the calls of choice. The Cosmopolitan had only recently been invented, and there were about six vodkas known to man.”

Neal Murray is now retired spending his time travelling and writing about restaurants on his chasingcuisine.com which reasons, “Neal Murray invented the Cosmopolitan Cocktail, it says so on his business card.”

Melissa Huffsmith

Until Miss Charming's book, Melissa Huffsmith’s place in the history of the Cosmopolitan was confined to merely being the co-worker Toby Cecchini mentions as being the person who told him about the pink San Francisco Cosmopolitan in his 2003 book Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life.

Melissa Huffsmith first learned of the Cosmopolitan from Patrick “Paddy” Mitten who she worked with at Life Café (343 E 10th St B in Alphabet City, Manhattan) where the Cosmopolitan was served for staff on-the-rocks in “milkshake to-go cups.”

Miss Charming believes “Mitten is the bartender who brought the Cosmopolitan from San Francisco to New York City in October of 1987.” Mitten, an Englishman who in 1985 went to work for the San Francisco Ballet, worked as a bartender at the Patio Café in San Francisco and it is here that he first learned of the Cosmopolitan cocktail. [To quote Miss Charming’s book], Mitten remembers his manager, Alan Mary Kay, walking in one day saying, “I just tried a new cocktail, and it’s pink! It’s called a Cosmopolitan. It’s a Kamikaze with cranberry, but served as a Martini.”

After many of his friends and partner had died of AIDS, Mitten moved to New York City in October 1987 started as a bartender at Life Café where he taught Huffsmith and others how to make the pink Martini from San Francisco called a Cosmopolitan. Mitten claims to have served a Cosmo to Madonna and even Sarah Jessica Parker when they were filming the pilot of Sex and the City.

Dale Degroff

Huffsmith left the Life Café to bartend at Manhattan’s famous The Odeon in April 1989 where her manager was Paul Bacsik, and [according to Miss Charming’s book], one night Bacsik was making her a shift drink and Huffsmith requested a Cosmopolitan. Bacsik didn’t know what it was, so Huffsmith told him how to make it. She explained that it was vodka, triple sec, and Rose’s lime with a splash of cranberry juice. When Bacsik asked her what kind of vodka to use, she felt experimental (because at Life Café they did not have upgraded brands), so she decided to try Absolut Citron since it was new, Cointreau, fresh lime juice, and cranberry juice. She said it was yummy. Huffsmith went on to say that the fresh lime juice gave the drink a beautiful, refreshing cloudy light pink lemonade look and all the bartenders started making them for the regulars.

Toby Cecchini

Dale Degroff Book

As stated above, the Cosmopolitan made the rounds of gay bars in San Francisco during the late 70s and early 80s. At that time, it consisted of rail vodka with Rose's Lime and Rose's Grenadine and it is this drink that Toby Cecchini says 'came to New York and came to me through another bartender who worked at The Odeon called Melisa Huffsmith. It was a ghastly drink and I reformulated it using Citron, which Absolut had just come out with, cranberry juice, and the things we were using at the time to make fresh Margaritas. It was kind of a no brainer. I was 25 years old and I invented the drink to impress the waitresses. I invented the Cosmopolitan as it's known. (See ' Toby Cecchini's Cosmopolitan original 1988 recipe).

Dale DeGroff

Dale Degroff Book

Bartending legend Dale “King Cocktail” DeGroff came across the Cosmopolitan at the Fog City Diner in San Francisco [see Neal Murray above] in the early to mid-1990s and back in Manhattan, started perfecting his own recipe at the Rainbow Rooms adding his now signature flamed orange zest twist garnish.

During a Sony Grammy party at the Rainbow Room, The Associated Press photographed Madonna drinking Dale’s Cosmopolitan and put it on wire with the caption, “Madonna drinking the Cosmopolitan at the world-famous Rainbow Room.” New York Magazine credited Dale with the drink's invention, other publications followed, and he was asked to present it on several television stations. Dale’s career took off and due to this publicity it is Dale who continues to be most identified with the Cosmopolitan Cocktail.

Dale Degroff Pimento Bitters

Dale has never claimed to have invented the Cosmopolitan and in his own 2002 book, The Craft of the Cocktail he explains that while he did not invent the Cosmopolitan, 'What I did do was popularize a definitive recipe that became widely accepted as the standard.'

Dale Degroff Cosmo

Sex and the City

Dale Degroff Recipes

Based on the eponymous column written by Candace Bushnell in the New York Observer, the HBO television series, Sex and the City debuted in 1998. Using an alter-ego with the same initials, Candace wrote about Carrie Bradshaw's fashionista Manhattan lifestyle and her friends Miranda, Charlotte and sexpot Samantha. The TV show frequently showed the characters sipping Cosmos and when the series hit the big screen in 2008, the film closed with the girls questioning why they had ever stopped drinking them.

Miss Charming contacted Candace who responded, ““Hi Cheryl Charming—Thanks for writing to me. Back in the late eighties/early nineties ‘designer’ spirit brands like Absolut were making a big push for the club crowd. Bret Easton Ellis and I were going out every night and one night we started drinking them. We’d always drank vodkas with cranberry juice and the Cosmo, with the fresh lime juice, seemed like a good alternative. Once we had our first Cosmo, we couldn’t stop drinking them. And I pretty much made everyone else drink them too. When Darren and I first met, in 1995, I took him out on the town and introduced him to the Cosmo. I think I may have even posed for photographs with a Cosmo. I suppose it was my signature drink, and because Carrie was my alter-ego, she naturally had to drink them as well!”

For more information on the Cosmopolitan, see Miss Charming's growing webpage here.