Cocktail & Other Recipes By Spirit Bourbon Cocktails

Scofflaw

Scofflaw cocktail

Liquor.com / Tim Nusog

Next time you visit your favorite speakeasy-style watering hole, you might want to make the experience more authentic by ordering what most people actually drank during Prohibition. (And remember: Back then, the peephole on the front door served a purpose—to stave off the cops long enough to hide the booze.)

So if you desire a true speakeasy drink, you can have either a glass of Champagne or a Ginger Ale Highball. That’s about it. All that talk of the fabulous cocktails made in the midst of Prohibition in order to mask the flavors of badly made alcohol is wrong. When your drinking experience is an illegal one, you just want to get down to drinking.

While the Scofflaw was invented during the Noble Experiment, it didn’t rear its head in some subterranean dive in Chicago. It was reportedly a creation of a bartender named Jock at Harry’s New York Bar—in Paris.

The recipe was a result of the word “scofflaw” coming to prominence on January 15, 1924. It won a contest held by prohibitionist Delcevare King that asked people to coin a term to describe the lawless drinker, “to stab awake the conscience.” The word, I think, is pretty neat, but I’m not sure how many consciences were stabbed awake by it.

According to drinks historian David Wondrich, as far as he can tell, the only surviving drink that can lay legitimate claim to having been dreamed up in the U.S. while the Great Drought was on is the French 75. At the time, the name was used for a few different potions, but the standard formula ended up being a pretty simple affair incorporating gin (not cognac), lemon juice, sugar and Champagne.

Originally, the Scofflaw called for “1/3 rye whiskey, 1/3 French vermouth, 1/6 lemon juice and 1/6 grenadine.” That doesn’t do much for me, so I played around with it. Hoist one version or the other whenever you toast the repeal of Prohibition, and give thanks that your conscience no longer needs to be stabbed awake.

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces bourbon or rye whiskey

  • 1 ounce dry vermouth

  • 1/4 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

  • 1 to 2 dashes grenadine

  • 1 dash orange bitters

Steps

  1. Add the whiskey, dry vermouth, lemon juice, grenadine and orange bitters into a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled.

  2. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.