The cooler is one of the less well-defined categories of mixed drink, both historically and mixologically, but the drinks that fall into it—light, cold, and (generally) made long with soda water or ginger ale—were both popular and influential. By the 1880s, when the term first starts appearing attached to specific drinks, the julep and the large glass of punch, two of the mainstays of traditional summer drinking, were starting to fade from favor—too heavy, too alcoholic, too complicated to make. See julep and punch. Even the cobbler, which was none of those things, had its issues: sherry was expensive and domestic wines inconsistent in quality. See cobbler.
The first coolers on record come from the 1884 Modern Bartender, by the pseudonymous O. H. Byron, which seems to have been compiled in New York. The Brunswick Cooler—perhaps named after the fashionable hotel of that name—is simply lemon, sugar, and ginger ale, with no alcohol (this later cropped up as the Saratoga Cooler and, in Chicago, the Auditorium Cooler), while the Rocky Mountain Cooler repeats the lemon and sugar but adds an egg and hard cider. The category didn’t take off until later that decade with the Remsen Cooler, first attested to in 1889. Made by peeling a lemon in a spiral, pressing the peel against the inside of a tall glass to extract some of the oil, and filling the glass with ice, Old Tom gin, and soda water, it was invented by William Remsen, of New York’s august Union Club (1815–1895), although some say it was invented by his son, William Jr. It rose to broad popularity in the mid-1890s. It was easy to make, cheap, light, and very refreshing and pointed the way to the highball. See Highball. The unfamiliarity of its name, however, led to its being frequently mangled and to some mistaking “Remsen” for “Ramsay” and making the drink with Ramsay scotch whisky from Islay.
Between them, the Remsen Cooler and the Brunswick Cooler set some general parameters for the category: it would have soda water or ginger ale, a shot of spirits, ice, and some citrus presence, although usually not the juice. By the 1890s, however, these parameters overlapped with those of the Collins as well as the new highball and rickey. See Collins and rickey. Those were all well-defined and immensely popular, and the cooler was neither. As a result it drifted into being a catch-all for long, refreshing drinks that didn’t quite fit into any of those better-known categories, such as the Panama Cooler printed by Charley Mahoney of New York’s Hoffman House, with two kinds of wine, orange juice, lime juice, maraschino liqueur, and no carbonation at all. See
Indeed, the only cooler to achieve true classic status and to be revived in the cocktail renaissance is the Florodora Cooler, and it was invented in 1901 (Susie Drake, one of the stars of the smash hit musical of that name, was in a New York City cafe one night after the show and refused to drink anything unless the bartender invented something just for her; Jimmy O’Brien, the technician in question, obliged).
Recipe (Florodora Cooler): Combine in highball glass 10 ml raspberry syrup, 30 ml lime juice, and 45 ml Plymouth gin; fill with cracked ice, add 60 ml ginger ale, and stir lightly.
Boothby, William T. Cocktail Boothby’s American Bartender, San Francisco: 1891.
“Latest summer drink.” Cortland (NY) Evening Standard, July 11, 1901, 3.
New York Press, September 16, 1889, 2.
By: David Wondrich