Sherry Cobbler

90 ml (3 oz) amontillado sherry
15 ml (0.5 oz) simple syrup
2–3 orange slices

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Notes

One of the oldest American cocktails, dating back to at least the 1830s and wildly popular through the Civil War era — Charles Dickens featured it in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), and it appeared in Jerry Thomas's landmark 1862 How to Mix Drinks, the first cocktail book ever published. The Sherry Cobbler is credited with two major innovations in drinking culture: it popularized crushed ice at a time when ice itself was a luxury, and it drove the adoption of the drinking straw — originally a literal rye straw — because sipping through a mound of crushed ice without one was impractical. By the early 20th century, the drink had faded, a casualty of Prohibition and shifting tastes, but its addition to the IBA New Era Drinks list marks a well-deserved revival for what is arguably the cocktail that taught America how to drink cold.