Have you heard the one about the Quarantini? It’s the same as a regular Martini – you just drink it at home, on your own.
That was pretty funny when the nation’s bars were still resounding to the rattle of cocktail shakers. It doesn’t sound quite so funny now. But even before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, a lot of us were choosing to mix more cocktails at home, mainly on account of the gin boom.
The last time people got really, really good at drinking in their houses was during American Prohibition – the age, ironically, when the cocktail party flourished. Up until the 1920s, Americans – or American men, as it generally was – did most of their hard drinking outside the home, in clubs, saloons and hotel bars. Cocktail mixing was a job left to the professionals, and cocktail drinking was done in public.