“African Americans have a peculiar relationship with spirits and spirited drinks,” says Toni Tipton-Martin, the James Beard award-winning author and editor-in-chief for Cook’s Country. Late last year, Tipton-Martin published a cocktail-focused cookbook and story collection titled Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book, which details the contributions of Black Americans to the cocktail canon.
“We participated up to a point and then every reference to cocktail-making disappears from Black cookbooks,” she explains. “The way I measured what was influential was based on the limited number of recipes that persist today.”
These drinks remain a vibrant cornerstone of modern American drinks culture and continue to be mixed and remixed. Some have spawned variations that have taken on lives of their own. And yet, imbibers largely remain ignorant to these drinks’ heritage—something Tipton-Martin’s book seeks to rectify.
After all, to more fully understand a libation’s history is to better enjoy it. Chances are, you’ve already sipped your way through more than a few of the following, which represent just a fraction of Black America’s contributions to mainstream drinking culture.
Planter’s Punch
Rum-based drinks were a mainstay of the plantation South and remain popular today. Rum, of course, has a complicated and tragic history—its origins are intrinsically tied to the sugar trade and the physical brutality of plantation slavery. In Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice, Tipton-Martin doesn’t dive too deeply into these drinks’ history, she says, because too much of the preserved record reflects the erasure and suppression of rum production’s human toll.
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She does, however, explore the origins of Planter’s Punch, a popular rum punch well-known in the Caribbean that later spread to the rest of the Americas. “It may be rooted in the plantation practice of incentivizing and rewarding enslaved workers (including children) with strong liquor, sometimes mixed with water and sugar,” she writes. “One legend says that a Jamaican planter’s wife made the combination to quench the thirsts of her laborers, though [one] can see today that would be at best a mixed blessing.”
The version featured in Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice, which Tipton-Martin created in partnership with cocktail educator Tiffanie Barriere, features a mixture of fresh lemon, orange and lime juices, plus both dark Jamaican and white rums. Pomegranate grenadine lends a blush hue. Other Planters Punch interpretations spotlight pineapple juice and a fresh mint garnish.
Mint Julep
The mint julep is deeply associated with the Kentucky Derby, but it has even deeper roots in African American history. In the early 20th century, Black bartenders slung drinks at many exclusive Southern country clubs and played a pivotal role in the popularization of this drink, an adaptation of a British libation called “The Smash,” which involves muddled fruit, a spirit and something sweet. The mint julep, however, is decidedly American—bourbon is the essential ingredient—plus fresh mint and simple syrup.
“There’s a mixologist named Julian Anderson who, in 1919, published the second book that we know of by an African American mixologist that was dedicated completely to cocktail recipes,” Tipton-Martin says. “He, also, grew his own mint. That tells us a little bit about how mint [from his mint julep] got in his glass.”
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She also cites John Dabney, an African American man born into slavery in the 1820s, as an early mint julep influencer in Richmond, Virginia. Using his mixology skills—and the then-new availability of year-round ice—he created “snow” for his cocktails, which featured prominently in his “Hail-Storm Mint Julep.” In Dabney’s lifetime, the city of Richmond honored him with an engraved silver goblet for his “champion juleps.”
Cognac
Cognac and other brandies have enjoyed popularity in the Black community since the days following World War II. One theory as to why: Black servicemen serving in France fell in love with these spirits and came home with a taste for them. Such drinks became the foundation of Black drinking culture, eventually gaining even more popularity through modern hip-hop and rap culture.
“In my book, I talk about the time period between those two dates,” says Tipton-Martin. “There was a time in the post-Civil Rights 1970s when it was decided that [Black Americans] were an important group to sell and market towards. There was quite a bit of advertisement directed at us.”
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Tipton-Martin mentions Busta Rhymes and 2Pac as two superstars whose discography includes special mention of brown spirits, but gives special attention to hip-hop icon (and cocktail enthusiast) T-Pain. Her White Russian-influenced interpretation of T-Pain’s modern coffee cocktail the Cognac, Coffee and Cream—which originally appeared in the musical artist’s 2021 recipe book Can I Mix You a Drink? 50 Cocktails from My Life & Career—features a blend of homemade coffee liqueur, Cognac and heavy cream.
Hibiscus Drinks
“Hibiscus tea isn’t a spirited drink, but in modern times, it has become more so because of its adaptability to the Juneteenth celebration,” notes Tipton-Martin. “When you think about our passion for red drinks tied to Juneteenth, that’s a history that goes way back to a red-colored beverage initially like a lemonade.”
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Sorrel is a type of hibiscus flower. With roots in West Africa, the plant was introduced to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade. A popular Caribbean drink, also called sorrel, is made by steeping the flower with ginger, spices and citrus; it’s commonly consumed during the holiday season. Today, Tipton-Martin argues, sorrel connects everyone in the African diaspora to the continent of Africa.
Her sorrel recipe is an adaptation of an earlier recipe that appeared in her 2019 cookbook Jubilee. Dried hibiscus flowers are steeped in boiling water with ginger, cinnamon, cloves and orange and lemon zests. Sweetened with demerara sugar, honey or agave nectar, it’s served chilled over ice. Imbibers are free to enjoy it with or without alcohol—most spiked Caribbean versions feature rum.
Gin and Juice
Tipton-Martin does not claim gin and juice originated in Africa, nor that African Americans were the first to create gin cocktails. But the drink, which was popularized through Black music and, in particular, the rapper Snoop Dogg, has had an undeniable impact on mainstream drinks culture. Its origins may also go back further than most realize.
“It’s so much fun to tie [gin and juice] to Snoop [and] our relationship to oranges, especially bitter oranges, [which] can be traced to the Moors,” says Tipton-Martin. “When you look back at West African cookbooks, there are a number of recipes that muddle oranges with lime and something sweet, and that habit persists as we begin to add spirits to our drinks.”
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Interestingly, Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice was published on the very same day as Snoop Dogg’s Goon with the Spoon cookbook, which features several gin-splashed spins on popular drinks. One, a take on the Arnold Palmer, is called “Pimp’s Cup” and includes the gin-based liqueur Pimm’s.
For her part, interpretations of gin and juice remind Tipton-Martin of the gin fizz, a citrusy and frothy egg white-infused gin cocktail steeped in Louisiana history. It was perfected by Black women like Rebecca West, a domestic worker who offers three versions in her 1942 cookbook collection Rebecca’s Cookbook, and Queen Ida Guillory, whose blender-friendly recipe appears in her 1990 cookbook Cookin’ with Queen Ida: Bon temps Creole Recipes (and Stories) from the Queen of Zydeco Music.
Published: February 20, 2024
