There are a few origin stories of the Moscow Mule, but each story involves John and Jack, a bar and a woman…
A Brief History of Copper Mugs & The Moscow Mule
Hollywood, California, 1941. It’s smack in the middle of the Golden Age of Hollywood, on the Sunset Strip in sunny Los Angeles. One day, in his friend Jack Morgan’s Hollywood bar, the Cock’n Bull, successful importer John G. Martin was in the mood to complain. He’d purchased a then-unknown vodka distillery (a little company called Smirnoff), and he was lamenting his inability to unload the vodka. It just wasn’t selling, he said.
Still smarting from Prohibition, Americans were dearly devoted to their beer and whiskey. Vodka? Not so much.
Morgan, it turned out, was having the same issue trying to sell his ginger beer. Over hours of drinks, the two came up with a strategy: combine their beverages and sell it as one cocktail.
But what about the distinctive Moscow Mule copper mug the cocktail would become famous for?
That’s where the woman comes in.
Depending on which story you’re telling, it’s either Morgan’s girlfriend, Osalene Schmitt, whose family owned a copper mine, or Sophie Berenzinski, a Russian woman who had traveled to America expressly to offload the two thousand copper mugs her father’s copper factory had manufactured and couldn’t sell.
Each story ends the same, inside the smoky Cock’n Bull pub. Three people, three different problems, one solution: the dawn of a new cocktail that would incorporate all three elements: ginger beer, vodka, and the copper mug.
And the Moscow Mule was born.
Not Just Moscow
Although the Moscow is the traditional mule, variations on the cocktail are endless. The base of the drink remains the same: lime and ginger beer. Creative bartenders substitute vodka with the spirit of their choice. From rum to tequila to gin to bourbon, a mule can be crafted to suit every taste.