Tucked on a side street of the bustling tree lined mosaic of La Rambla, you can find Barcelona’s oldest cocktail bar. Its name is Boadas and it is one of the few places in the world where your Martini will be prepared with a dexterous bartending technique called throwing. This famous practice involves holding one vessel high over the head and skilfully pouring it down in a thin cascading stream into another. This process is continued back and forth between two tins until the drink is fully combined. This method of mixing a cocktail is thought to aerate the drink with just the right amount of soft small bubbles to leave the concoction feeling rich, well-blended and smooth. And I have to say the sight of gin and vermouth waterfalls flowing gracefully through the air before they collect into a petite little pool in your glass also looks pretty awesome. According to the Boadas family, this technique was brought to Europe in the 1930’s by the bar’s founder Miguel Boadas.
Before making his way to Spain, Miguel had been working at a bar in Cuba. That bar, called La Floridita, fills a frequently referenced page in cocktail history. It is where literaries like John Dos Passos, Graham Greene and Ezra Pound used to wet their beaks quite regularly. You may have heard of their most famous customer Ernest Hemingway, who loved to spend his afternoons sitting at the bar sipping daquiris, a pastime I would one day love to adopt. Cuba, like other wonderful pockets of the world, flourished during Prohibition attracting thirsty tourists and talented bartenders looking to continue their creative prowess behind the bar. However, Cuba’s cocktail history, like much of this legendary world, is older that most people think.
How did the art of throwing get to Cuba? That I am not sure of. But I do know that up until the late nineteenth century, throwing was regular practice in most cocktail bars. Even bars all the way in Australia were mixing drinks like this as far back as 1854. (you can read more about that here.) Reading through our man Jerry Thomas’s collection of recipes, pretty much confirms this. And because the technique is something even Jerry didn’t dare take credit for, I imagine it must have been extremely commonplace. In his 1862 Bartender’s Guide, our Father of Flare does explain that this is the best mixing technique for a drink called the flip. Flips were a category of drinks that were served warm. The beverages contained rum or brandy, ale, or water, sugar, and a sprinkle of nutmeg or ginger. By the eighteenth century this recipe went on to include eggs. Although these ingredients sound very similar to those in the Tom and Jerry Punch, Jerry does not claim to have invented the flip. That’s probably because flips predated Jerry Thomas, not by decades, but by hundreds of years. They were in fact considered a favourite drink of maritime travellers since the mid sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
All flipping aside, during the Gold Rush, many bartenders mixed their drinks by throwing. This was primarily because in addition to the theatrics it created behind the bar, the process was able to produce a substantial bit of foam. Since no one bartender has ever tried to take credit for it, I have often wondered where this method of mixing came from.
Difford’s Guide, an industry resource referenced by many, believes throwing came into practice because of the Chinese. They say that from 1000 to 1300 members of the Song Dynasty were pouring their tea from one vessel to another at great heights. They say that this practice then moved along the spice trade where it was then adopted by the Moors. I guess it is assumed that because the Moors went to Spain, the Spanish also adopted it. It says this technique looks amazing. And maybe it did. But I don’t think that is where throwing came from.
There is however a strong correlation between throwing and the Spanish. In fact, Spanish recipe books from the seventeenth century often include instructions for making a liquid froth or foam using this technique. But the directions are not for making tea. They are instead meant to mix another type of drink quite popular during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This act of pouring from one vessel to another from a height is referred to as t’oh by the Mayans, a native tribe of Mexico, probably most famous for making a calendar that said we were all going to die in 2012. Or something like that. Anyway, this is a word that comes from the Classic Mayan language and was used in conjunction with the word haa, which means, chocolate. That is because this technique is an ancient tradition for making hot chocolate, a sacred practice that was continued amongst some native civilizations of Mexico for thousands of years. Eventually these directives found their way into the cookbooks of the 16 and 1700s, a time when Europe was becoming obsessed with chocolate. It was said that this process produces a highly favoured aerated foam in the drink. And this just sounds way too familiar to the purpose of cocktail throwing for me to ignore it.
Considering the Mexican origin, it shouldn’t be all too surprising that the bartenders of the Gold Rush practiced this technique regularly. Up until 1849, Alta California was not American, but Mexico’s most northern state. In 1821, the Mexicans finally regained their independence from Spain, a country that spread its influence all over the Mesoamerican plains and the Caribbean. So, correct me if I am wrong but, I do believe this might be where the art of throwing originated. Do I know for a fact this is where it came from? Not yet. But I do think it’s something worth thinking about.
**What do you think? Do you think throwing came from the Chinese? Do you think it began with the Mexicans? Does it really matter? I want to know! Let me know in the comments/chat below.