frozen drinks, blender drinks

frozen drinks, blender drinks , are alcoholic beverages made by grinding the ingredients and ice together in an electric blender. In the first edition of his seminal Bartender’s Guide, Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron, erstwhile champion of the faux-Polynesian beverage revolution, renders the following judgment: “The use of mechanical mixers is varied and in many cases abused. Most cocktails, as mentioned before, are best stirred or shaken. Putting them in a mechanical mixer dilutes them to a sickly mess. Waring blenders and other mechanical mixers are indispensable, however, for … Daiquirís, and drinks where snow ice is required.” See Bergeron, Victor “Trader Vic.”

In 1910, Fred Osius formed the Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Co. in Racine, Wisconsin, naming it after a pair of his employees. In the mid-1920s, he set out to reimagine the electric mixer patented in 1922 by Stephen J. Poplawski (also of Racine) to make malted milkshakes (another Wisconsin invention). In 1933, Osius talked the popular bandleader Fred Waring into funding and championing his patented Miracle Mixer, released to the American public in 1933. It has since come to be recognized as the first true electric blender. In 1937, however, after tinkering with the design himself, Waring released an improved version, the Waring Blendor (spelled with an “o”). It was this version that became the classic.

The legendary Constantino Ribailagua Vert of the Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba, was among the first barmen to adopt the blender as a standard tool for drink making, inspiring many of the great bartenders of the 1930s and beyond to follow suit. According to legend, Ribailagua made more than ten million Daiquiris in his time. There is much dispute about his precise technique, but for many drinks he seems to have used the blender much in the same way that the modern bartender employs a cocktail shaker, pulsing the ingredients just long enough to chill them, but not so long as to turn the drink to slush. Rumor has it that “Constante” favored a Waring as his blender of choice. He was known for then filtering out even the tiniest shards of ice with a fine mesh sieve.

By the early 1960s, some were turning the Margarita into a blender drink. When Texan Mariano Martinez introduced the frozen Margarita machine in 1973, that completed the transformation of the frozen drink from expert bartender’s product to anything-goes crowd pleaser. Just splash some white rum, mixto tequila, or whatever into the blender, add some sour mix, and throw in whatever fruit you’ve got handy. Add ice, grind it all together, and pour it out into an oversized, stemmed glass. Done.

Come the twenty-first-century cocktail revival, outside of tiki bars, where blenders are still an essential tool, it was as if every freshly minted new “mixologist” was handed a plaque reading “No Blenders” to hang behind his or her bar. That is beginning to change, as cocktail culture begins to relax. In fact, one of the hot drinks of 2017 was the blender-friendly Frosé (for “frozen rosé”), and there are signs that other such light, friendly frozen drinks are attracting new fans.

See Margarita.

Bergeron, Victor. Bartender’s Guide. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947.

Berry, Jeff. Beachbum Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean. New York: Cocktail Kingdom, 2014.

Foley, Ray. The Ultimate Little Frozen Drinks Book. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2001.

Poplawski, Stephen J. Beverage mixer. US Patent1,480,914, granted January 15, 1924.

“Varadero Beach Is West Indies Riviera,” Boston Herald, December 5, 1954, sec. 4, 14.

By: Richard Boccato