The Best Bars Where Famous Drinks Were Invented

Every famous cocktail has a birthplace, and most have two or three. These eight bars all claim one, and all are still pouring. Some claims are solid, some are a matter of wording, and a few are still argued over — so for each, here is what the record says.

The solid ones first. The Bellini was invented by Giuseppe Cipriani at Harry's Bar in Venice, sometime between 1934 and 1948. The Vieux Carré was created at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans by its bartender Walter Bergeron, and the hotel's Carousel Bar has been slowly revolving since 1949. The Buena Vista in San Francisco didn't invent Irish coffee — that was at Foynes, in Ireland — but it's where America first drank it, from 10 November 1952.

Then the claims that depend on the wording. El Floridita in Havana calls itself the cradle of the daiquiri; the drink was probably first mixed by an American mining engineer near Santiago around 1898, but Floridita's bartender Constante is credited with the frozen version in the 1930s. Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans made the passion-fruit Hurricane famous in the 1940s, though a drink by that name was in print by 1935.

And the disputed ones. The Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel says the Singapore Sling was made there around 1915; one historian argues it's from the 1890s, and the original recipe was lost. Harry's New York Bar in Paris claims the Bloody Mary in 1921, but New York's 21 Club claims it too, and the bartender at the centre of the story later said he perfected it in New York. La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana calls itself the birthplace of the mojito — which is disputed — and its Hemingway line has never been authenticated.