Yale – Recipe from the ‘Old Waldorf Bar Guide’

An institution somewhere beyond Old Greenwich, where many young men go for the purpose of commuting to New York for weekends. The Bar used to be one of their “ports of call” and there they used to find many who in years past had gone to the same place and done the same things. 

Dash of Orange Bitters 

One-half Tom Gin 

One-half Italian Vermuth 

Stir; strain; a little Seltzer on top

The above almost sounds like those young students were drinking plenty before the age of 21 if they’re at Yale and stopping at the Waldorf for a weekend drink or two.

Laws in the states were very relaxed about all things to do with drinking right up until prohibition, one of the few new fully enforced laws to come out of repeal in 1933, after 14 year of speakeasies locating close to schools to target students was a new minimum drinking age. This wasn’t as set in stone at 21 as I previously thought, it was set at 21 as that was the voting age, when this was dropped to 18 so was the drinking age. This remained at various levels state to state until 1984 when the government simply said that any state that didn’t increase minimum age to 21 would receive 10% less funding for highways, in an attempt to combat drink driving accidents. This is the first time I’ve really thought about how this impacted drinking in bars in the states, from hazy memory bars made a lot of money from me while I was at university, in some respects it must be a lot tougher in the US owning a bar with a smaller section of population able to pop in for a drink.

The drink itself isn’t a bad one, its very easy drinking, with both a lower amount of alcohol in from the proportion of vermouth, and the soda. Its not particularly memorable, but certainly not the worst drink I’ve had this year.