Japanese Cocktail

A historic pre-Prohibition sipper featuring cognac enhanced with orgeat's almond richness and aromatic bitters, creating an elegant, subtly sweet cocktail with Middle Eastern undertones.

The Japanese Cocktail is one of the few 19th-century American cocktails with a precisely documented creation occasion: Jerry Thomas made it in 1860 to celebrate the arrival of the first official Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States. The Kanrin Maru delegation — representing the Tokugawa Shogunate government — arrived in San Francisco in February 1860 aboard the Japanese warship Kanrin Maru and the American naval vessel Powhatan, making the journey to Washington to ratify the Harris Treaty of 1858. During the mission's time in New York, a reception was held at the Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway at Prince Street, where Thomas was working as head bartender. Thomas created the drink specifically for the occasion and named it the Japanese Cocktail in honor of the visitors. The formula — cognac, orgeat almond syrup, and Boker's bitters — appeared in Thomas's 1862 Bar-Tenders Guide, the first significant American bartending manual, where it became one of the earliest named cocktails with a documented creation story. Boker's bitters, produced in the United States and widely used in pre-Prohibition bartending, were discontinued and lost for nearly a century before being reconstructed from the original formula in the early 21st century, allowing the Japanese Cocktail to be made to its authentic specification for the first time in generations.