Southern Comfort, the whiskey+fruit n’ spices liqueur (I guess?), produced these pamphlets that you could find in your favorite magazine from the 1950s on. This one is probably from the early 1960s and everyone looks like they’re having a grand time.
You may not be a SoCo fan, but it’s more tasteful than most of these toasts.
Someone else who helped sell Southern Comfort in the late Sixties? Janis Joplin, who drank a lot of it. Joplin died of a heroin overdose (possibly compounded by alcohol) in 1970.
"It's the most nauseating idea in the world: a comedian in a gown leaning against a baby grand without making a joke," Ana Gasteyer says. There are plenty of jokes (and a lot of great singing) on her new holiday album.
OK, I’m calling it: Sugar and Booze (which presciently came out last Christmas) is the most appropriate song for CFH (Christmas from Home) 2020.
Ana Gasteyer singing it live last year:
Namechecks: Hendricks, Manischewitz
Preferred Cider Mixer: Rum
Sticking with the theme, the official runner up: Cider and Hennessy by Jordin Sparks:
The perfect host knows the perfect glass for each drink, but in case you forgot, Libbey provides a visual reminder in this 1962 ad (glasses start at 15¢!). See more Libbey barware here.
Not that long ago, I picked up a set of drinking glasses and matching ice bucket from an antique store down the shore. These glasses were made by the Libbey Glass Company and it’s easy to find sets of this pattern, Silver Foliage, on eBay, Etsy, and other sites, especially if you search for “vintage Midcentury Modern glasses.” It’s no surprise, since Libbey was, and still is, one of the biggest manufacturers of drinking glasses.
Libbey’s most popular patterns were sold for decades. According to some internet sources, Silver Foliage was produced between 1957 and 1978. The Golden Foliage pattern was introduced the same year and produced through 1982 – so those vintage Midcentury Modern glasses on eBay could actually be from the Disco Era.
The tumblers and ice bucket in this undated ad match our set.
Golden Foliage was so popular that other manufacturers copied the design on their own glasses (our set has Libbey’s cursive “L” maker’s mark on the bottom of each glass). Meanwhile, Libbey was busy putting the two foliage patterns on different styles and types of glassware (check out the tray and carafe in the ad below). You could probably develop a detailed chronology of Silver Foliage by the yearly catalogs put out by the company; unfortunately they do not seem to be available online.
If you don’t already have a penguin-shaped cocktail shaker, check out this Sotheby’s auction underway now. The shakers, ice buckets, and glasses were selected by Alan Bedwell to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Prohibition. While Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933, the items in the auction range from the 1700s to the 1980s.
Penguin Cocktail Shaker, c. 1936. Source: Sotheby’s.
The Negroni Tweed is a collab between Matt Hranek and Fox Brothers. The latter is a British cloth maker founded in 1772, but who is Hranek? Well, his job titles have included “luxury editor,” he has a cool prefab house in upstate New York, and he started his own magazine. Also, he truly loves the Negroni. So why not make a fabric out of it? The resulting tweed entwines Campari red, orange, lemon peel yellow, and gray (gin is essentially colorless, so…).
The Negroni tweed. Source: Fox Brothers & Co., Ltd.
