Drink Like a Woman

Bewitched

Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

—THE WITCHES OF SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH

While we can’t say that Macbeth is exactly the hero of Shakespeare’s play, we do know the witches are the anti-heroines. They’re scorned by the men of Scotland and they don’t care—they glory in their powers of prophecy and their freedom from male control.

In a modern cocktail, it’s the muddle, muddle that can cause toil and trouble. While you can pretty much muddle the heck out of fruit, you can easily ruin a drink if you muddle herbs with a heavy hand. So here’s a variation of a CUCUMBER SOUTHSIDE, a great drink with which to practice your muddle.

Start the Revolution

Women with alcohol played a crucial role in the American Revolution. Women used alcohol to treat infections and diseases—and also served up drinks in taverns. One famous Williamsburg, Virginia, tavern owner, JANE VOBE (1765–1786), offered free food and booze to soldiers throughout the Revolution.

The most legendary woman-and-drink story is of NANCY MORGAN HART (1735–1830), a Georgia woman who dressed as a man to spy on British soldiers. When six soldiers—presumably either Tories or British enlisted men—came to her farm demanding food, she didn’t just serve them dinner; she also poured her homemade corn whiskey and ensured they became inebriated. Then she removed their rifles, killed one, and wounded another.

This winning combination of whiskey and hard cider sparkles in flavor—to which we add just a kick of cinnamon syrup and bitters to give it a warm complexity. Angostura bitters work well in this recipe, but so do a variety of other bitters, including Bar Keep Baked Apple, Bittercube Blackstrap, Fee Brothers Molasses, and Fee Brothers Old Fashioned bitters. Any of these options will give this drink a nice finishing spark.

Madame Magnate

MADAME CLICQUOT (1777–1866) had been married only six years when her husband died, leaving her to run the family business: Champagne. Her exceptional talent with wine was soon revealed, and she worked with her cellar master to develop a new technique of riddling, or twisting, the bottles upside down to remove the yeast.

Her title veuve—“widow”—lives on in Veuve Clicquot luxury Champagne.

Naturally, the best cocktail to honor Madame is the classic CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL.

Jane Austen’s Zombie!

JANE AUSTEN (1775–1817) remains one of the most celebrated writers of all time. Modern authors love to pay homage to her, using her timeless novels as blueprints for modern storytelling. Her work has inspired countless revisionist tales, and her influence can be found in genres including science fiction, fantasy, political thrillers, and, of course, the killing of zombies.

Just like a zombie, Jane Austen will live forever. But the actual ZOMBIE drink might just wipe you out. With nearly five ounces of booze, it’s about two-and-a-half drinks’ worth of alcohol—but because it’s so fruity, it doesn’t taste like you’re drinking much. Which is why several tiki bars set limits on the number of Zombies patrons can purchase.

Brontë’s Brew

Charlotte (Jane Eyre), Emily (Wuthering Heights), and Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey) published some of the greatest Victorian novels—feminist classics still celebrated generations later for their spirited heroines and their fervent discontent with patriarchal expectations of women.

Raised mostly by their aunt Elizabeth after their mother died, the Brontë sisters lived in a small parsonage where their father was pastor, and they often amused themselves by inventing and writing about fantastical worlds. The three sisters first tried their hand at poetry, which they self-published to no success whatsoever. Then they turned their pens toward novels, and their legacies were launched.

Emily, Anne, and their ne’er-do-well brother, Bramwell, all died in quick succession in 1848 and 1849, perhaps from tuberculosis. Charlotte continued writing, and she even married, but her marriage was cut short—in 1853 she died, pregnant, at the age of thirty-eight.

Their lives may have been tragically brief, but the Brontë sisters’ words—and this recipe—will live on forever, inspiring the outspoken and adventurous Victorians in all of us.

Nellie Bly-Tai

Nellie Bly—or, rather, ELIZABETH COCHRAN (1864–1922)—was a spirited soul. She was a journalist in a time when there were hardly any women journalists, and even the other women who were reporters wrote only for the women’s pages. But not Nellie—in her first gig for the New York World, she went undercover to expose the ill treatment of women at an insane asylum. She also famously toured the world in less than eighty days. But her very first foray into newspapers was writing a fiery rebuttal to a sexist essay that described working women as “a monstrosity,” saying women were better suited to domestic duties in the home. Her passionate words earned her the job that launched her career, and we are all the better for it.

Nellie Bly has inspired women to study journalism and become writers. MAI TAIS have inspired women to enjoy cocktails. The two together make an unbeatable drink.

Tubmantini

A hard-working woman willing to risk death for freedom. An Underground Railroad conductor who led countless slaves out of the South. A spy for the Union Army who became the first woman to ever lead an army raid—and she didn’t lose a single soldier.

HARRIET TUBMAN (1822–1913) was all of this and more. As she told a suffrage convention in 1896, “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.”

Author Glennette Tilley Turner, who wrote the children’s book An Apple for Harriet Tubman, had the chance to talk with Harriet’s grandniece, who related a story about apples. When Harriet was a girl, she was not allowed to eat apples—she was even once whipped by an overseer for eating one. But once she was free and had purchased her own home, one of the first things she planted was an apple tree—and she shared her apples with everyone who came to visit.

So a recipe to honor Harriet has to include the apple. This refreshing vodka drink uses an “apple shrub”: a vinegar-sugar-fruit concoction that was once used to preserve fruit as well as to flavor drinks.