expositions and world’s fairs and other such national and international gatherings were—prior to the age of jet travel and, much later, the internet—the primary avenues by which countries could showcase their national identities and flex their commercial muscles, showing off such things as recent inventions, manufacturing highlights, and agricultural specialties. Wine, spirits, bitters, and cocktails played a significant role in many national displays.
London’s Great Exhibition (May 1–October 15, 1851) is considered the first large-scale international fair of its sort. An elaborate “crystal palace” constructed from enormous panes of glass on a prefabricated cast iron structure featured numerous national pavilions, visited by six million people over a six-month period. Unlike certain subsequent fairs, London’s 1851 fair was profitable—and the city hosted another World’s Fair in 1862.
Paris was a frequent host city during the nineteenth century, with fairs in 1855, 1867, 1878, and 1889—the last fair’s Eiffel Tower still stands. Other notable cities included Vienna (Weltausstellung 1873 Wien), Barcelona (Exposición Universal de Barcelona, 1888), and Brussels (Brussels International Exposition, 1897). The United States, seeking to project its ascendant technological and manufacturing prowess, hosted world’s fairs in Philadelphia (Centennial Exhibition, 1876), New Orleans (World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, 1884), and Chicago (World Columbian Exposition, 1893).
Notable early twentieth-century fairs included Paris (Paris International, 1900), St. Louis (Louisiana Purchase, 1904), San Francisco (Panama–Pacific International Exposition, 1915), Chicago (Century of Progress, 1933–1934), and New York (New York World’s Fair, 1939–1940).
Each world’s fair was an enormous undertaking, with host cities constructing massive exhibition halls and civic centerpieces; Philadelphia’s 1876 exhibition, for example, featured thirty thousand exhibitions across two hundred buildings. Countries spared no expense in creating elaborate pavilions showcasing their nation’s best, including wide-ranging offerings such as the telephone, Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, the Ferris wheel, motion pictures, and the escalator.
With so many products on hand, competitions were a natural part of the proceedings, judged by international panels of experts across multiple fields. Long before today’s crowdsourced reviews and ratings, awards granted by these judges, typically in the form of medals, were highly sought-after endorsements. Winners at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition included a surprising number of names still found on modern bars, including Bacardi rum, Jameson Irish whisky, Smirnov vodka (then a Russian brand), Dolin vermouth, and liqueurs from Marie Brizard, Combier, Luxardo, and Peter Heering. See Bacardi; cherry brandy; maraschino; Smirnoff; and whisky, Irish.
Winning brands frequently emblazoned their product labels with medal representations, often lined in a row. Today’s Bacardi, Dewar’s, and Angostura labels are among modern labels still featuring the image of medals won a century before.
The fairs also helped brands gain a foothold outside their home countries: Angostura bitters’ big break came after winning a medal at London’s 1862 fair, which led to much wider international distribution. See Angostura Bitters. Jamaica’s J. Wray & Nephew won three golds at the same show. See Appleton Estate. Cointreau got a boost after medal wins in Paris (1889) and Chicago (1893). See Cointreau. Sauza’s “mezcal brandy” similarly turned heads at the same 1893 exhibition. See Sauza. The gold medal win for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky in St. Louis (1904) is credited as a major turning point for the brand. See Jack Daniel’s. Other medal winners from that year include Bacardi and Rhum Barbancourt.
Cocktails were another vehicle by which participating countries promoted themselves to the world, beginning with the dueling “American bars” run by the London catering firms of Spiers & Pond and Bertram & Roberts at the 1867 Paris International Exhibition. These won the two firms enough acclaim back home to allow them to divide the London cocktail bar business between them for a generation—even if at the exhibition itself they were both eclipsed by the bar run by J. M. Van Winkle, an actual American, and its Sherry Cobblers. On one hot day, the bar went through some five hundred bottles of sherry, numbers that caused the planners of subsequent exhibitions to take note.
New York Sun to publish a long article on American bartenders and their work. This article was so widely reprinted that it spawned a host of similar articles, and indeed launched the modern field of drinks writing. See mixography.International exhibitions proved to be launching pads for drinks to reach new popularity. In 1887, Manhattan Cocktails were introduced to London at the bar run by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the American Exhibition. In 1924, the Planter’s Punches mixed by Jamaican bartender E. C. Pinnock at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley proved immensely popular (and it was the West Indies Pavilion’s other featured drink, the Trinidadian Green Swizzle, that so delighted P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster that he declared, “If ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down in the register”). In 1939, the Zombie, which the New York café impresario Monte Proser pirated from Don the Beachcomber, was served—and served, and served—at the New York World’s Fair. And these examples are only three of many. See Green Swizzle; Manhattan Cocktail; Planter’s Punch; and Zombie.
After World War II, World’s Fairs and international exhibitions resumed, but with an impact greatly lessened by the rise of mass tourism, which meant that if people wished to learn about French culture, they would do it in France, not at the French pavilion, and of electronic media, which meant that they had already seen James Bond drinking that new cocktail. Today they mostly survive in the form of murkily printed medallions on liquor labels.
Ingram, J. S. The Centennial Exposition, Described and Illustrated. Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros., 1876.
Walker, Frances A., ed. International Exhibition, 1876. Vol. 4, Reports and Awards. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1880.
Wodehouse, P. G. “The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy.” Saturday Evening Post, September 27, 1924, 8.
“World’s Fairs and Their Legacies.” New York Times (international edition), May 4, 2015.
By: Matt Pietrek and David Wondrich