Olympic Cocktail

Created for the 1924 Paris Olympics, this elegant cocktail balances cognac with curaçao and fresh orange juice.

The Olympic Cocktail dates to 1922 and is credited by Harry McElhone in his 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails to Frank Meier of the Ritz Hotel bar in Paris — though some accounts place its creation at Ciro's Club in London, where McElhone himself was working before he moved to Paris and eventually opened his own Harry's New York Bar. Meier later claimed credit for the drink in his own 1936 volume The Artistry of Mixing Drinks. The name's origin is historically interesting because 1922 was not an Olympic Games year: the Games had last been held in Antwerp in 1920 and would next be in Paris in 1924. The most likely naming candidate is the RMS Olympic, the White Star Line ocean liner that in 1922 gained two new running mates — the Majestic and the Homeric — forming the trio that dominated the transatlantic passenger trade throughout the 1920s. Frank Meier had a pattern of naming cocktails after luxury ocean liners, as evidenced by his SS Manhattan and SS Washington cocktails. The RMS Olympic was the lead ship of its class, larger than the Titanic and the only one of the three Olympic-class ships to enjoy a full commercial career — 24 years of service from 1911 to 1935. Its equal-parts formula of brandy, orange curaçao, and fresh orange juice produces a perfectly balanced drink that neatly suits its gold-medal name.