Barney Barnato

A brandy cocktail named for Barney Barnato — the Whitechapel-born magnate whose Kimberley diamond empire rivaled De Beers until his mysterious death at sea in 1897.

Barney Barnato was one of the most extraordinary figures of the Victorian era: a self-made millionaire who rose from London's East End poverty to become a dominant force in the South African diamond and gold rush of the 1880s. Born Barnett Isaacs in Whitechapel in 1851, he emigrated to the Kimberley diamond fields in 1873 and built an empire that rivaled Cecil Rhodes's De Beers. In 1889, Barnato sold his Kimberley Central Diamond Mining Company to Rhodes for £5,338,650, then the largest single cheque ever written. He died on June 14, 1897, when he jumped or fell overboard from the steamship Scot near the island of Madeira, en route from Cape Town to Southampton. This brandy-based cocktail is adapted from Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, which called for a now-defunct South African aromatized wine called Caperitif; modern versions substitute Lillet Blanc, a French aromatized wine with a similar character. The drink pays tribute to Barnato's audacious, larger-than-life character -- bold and potent, like the man it commemorates.