What’s the Worst Drink Name Ever? The List Is Long
Let us say a few words about the Duck Fart. I promise they will be mercifully few. Lore decrees that this drink was invented in 1987 at the Peanut Farm bar in Anchorage, Alaska, by a bartender named Dave Schmidt. It consists of Kahlúa, Bailey’s, and Crown Royal, layered like the flag of an unknown yet undoubtedly undesirable country. No one seems to remember why it was called that, but the cocktail became popular enough that it was soon considered Alaska’s state drink. To this day it’s all but mandatory that you order one at cash-only Ernie’s Old Time Saloon in Sitka.
Some cocktails become famous thanks to their sophisticated flavors, unexpected palate, or perfect balance. Some become famous for their names. These can be original enough or gross enough or just plain wrong enough to provide fuel for liftoff. When the drink’s reputation reaches escape velocity, the name then separates from the drink itself like a booster rocket from its payload, establishing its own orbit. The drink itself is secondary.
You needn’t look far for these drinks. Just find the loudest group of young men wearing backwards baseball caps, then follow them into a bar. (This might be easiest in college towns.) Here you may find the Sloe Comfortable Screw, the Panty Dropper, the Brain Hemorrhage, or the Mexican Firing Squad. It’s like playing Mad Libs with friends your parents didn’t want you hanging around with.
Many are relics from the 1970s and ’80s, and have survived to the present like a dirty magazine hidden between mattress and boxspring. But you can find progenitors in the early days of bar culture, at least when filtered through the modern lens. There’s the Auld Man’s Milk in Jerry Thomas’ pioneering 1862 cocktail guide. Harry Johnson’s influential 1882 cocktail guide had the Maiden’s Dream, Tenderloin Reviver, and Widow’s Kiss, which seem tame now but were ribald for the era.
Perhaps best known is the Monkey Gland, which first appeared overseas during Prohibition. It was named after a supposed medical cure—part of a testicle from a younger animal was grafted to an older animal, or from simian to human, to restore, er, manhood and vitality and possibly add to one’s longevity. The wink-wink was visible even through a monocle.
If there’s a central arc in cocktail names of the past century and a half, it’s a shift from plummy and aristocratic to casual and democratic. The early cocktails had names that often skewed toward the aspirational and established. Jerry Thomas had the Queen’s Punch, Victoria Punch, Regent Punch, and Duke of Norfolk Punch, as well as the Knickerbocker cocktail, named for the early Dutch residents of New York. The Manhattan cocktail became popular in the late 19th century. Note that it wasn’t called the Bowery.
As the decades passed, the drinking of cocktails became less elite and more for the everyman. (And after Prohibition, for everywoman.) The names of drinks track this pattern. The 1934 Mr. Boston guide includes the Barking Dog, Blue Devil, and Buddy cocktails, while other names reflected growing trends in newly accessible transportation (Aviation, Silver Streak, Sidecar, and Bon Voyage). The immensely popular Jack Rose was likely named after a notorious mobster and gambler, and in the 1950s came the Harvey Wallbanger, named after a surfer, for Pete’s sake.
Among the fascinating things about cocktail names is that they’re almost always grassroots creations—a bartender, or maybe a customer, tosses out a possible name. It attaches itself to a drink. And then it’s up to the market to decide if it endures. There’s no highly paid branding company that comes up with these cocktail names. It’s likely that hundreds of new cocktail names appear weekly at bars both fancy and not around the country. And a few live on thanks to infamy.
Humans evolved to both tell and listen for stories, and so it’s no surprise that some of longest-lasting questionable cocktail names tell a tale.
Humans evolved to both tell and listen for stories, and so it’s no surprise that some of longest-lasting questionable cocktail names tell a tale. Especially where a name like Daddy Issues (Service Bar in Washington, D.C.) invites a raised eyebrow and perhaps a brief conversation between bartender and guest, or between drinkers along the rail.
If I had to single out one drink for the tasteless tipple hall of fame, it would be the Ass Juice, a noted Las Vegas drink, because of course, Las Vegas. It’s the signature shot at the impressively dark, 24-hour Double Down Saloon (Motto: “Shut Up and Drink”). The drink surfaced a couple of decades ago as a shot of Becherovka, a brownish Czech digestif that nobody in the bar would buy, even when promoted at a dollar a shot. So the owner crossed out “Becherovka” and wrote “Ass Juice,” and it sold out immediately, as he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2012.
It’s been served ever since, typically in shot glasses shaped like small toilet bowls. Public service announcement: A shot glass and a T-shirt emblazoned with “From Our Ass to Your Glass” are currently available at $29 for the pair.
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