The Dubonnet Cocktail , in its most common form a mix of equal parts Dubonnet (the French aperitif wine) and gin, is yet another New York City creation, this one from the first decade of the twentieth century. Drink lore has long maintained that it was a creation of New York’s fashionable and sophisticated Café Martin. In this case, at least, that lore may well be correct: Jean-Baptiste Martin (1857–1918), one of the two French-born brothers who ran the cafe, was certainly a heavy promoter of Dubonnet and various drinks made with it, and when he left the business in 1912 when it moved uptown from Madison Square, it was to become Dubonnet’s American importer.
In any case, the Dubonnet Cocktail is first recorded in New York, in 1904, along with what has become its twin, the Waldorf-Astoria bar’s Zaza Cocktail, christened after the 1899 Broadway musical of the same name, then in revival. See Waldorf-Astoria. In fact, it was the Zaza that originally owned the Dubonnet-and-gin formula, while the Dubonnet Cocktail mixed the aperitif with either brandy or sherry, depending on whether you ordered it in New York or San Francisco; it wouldn’t be until the next decade that gin came into the formula.
The Dubonnet Cocktail was enormously popular in the 1910s, both in the United States and in Europe. While its European popularity continued unabated until World War II, it was seldom seen in America during Prohibition but vigorously revived there during the 1930s. During the war, it disappeared in Europe but, thanks to the manufacture of Dubonnet in the United States, was quite popular there. After the war, it lived on mostly in the pages of drink books, and one encounters it infrequently anywhere else. It has not played a role in the cocktail revival, in large part because until recently the American market got only the same domestically manufactured substitute it got during World War II, which lacked the cachet of other aperitifs, all imported. This was recently upgraded, albeit still being made domestically; it is too soon to tell if a revival in the Dubonnet Cocktail will ensue.
Recipe: Stir with cracked ice 45 ml Dubonnet, 45 ml London dry gin, and (optional) 2 dashes orange bitters. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and twist lemon peel over the top.
Crockett, Albert Stevens. Old Waldorf Bar Days. New York: Aventine, 1931.
Muckensturm, Louis. Louis’ Mixed Drinks. Boston: Caldwell, 1906.
“Spring Fashions in Drinks.” New York Times, May 8, 1904.
By: David Wondrich