10 Prohibition-Era Cocktails Worth Ordering

The ones built to hide bad liquor

The Bee's Knees — gin, lemon, honey syrup — exists because home-distilled bathtub gin during Prohibition was often harsh enough to need real disguising, and honey did the job better than the sugar syrup a legal gin might have used. It's still a good drink on its own terms, not just a historical curiosity, and most modern speakeasies keep some version of it on the menu.

The Southside — gin, lime, mint, sugar — is credited by some bar historians to Chicago's South Side Irish gang, who allegedly needed a way to make their product palatable; others trace it to the 21 Club in New York. Either origin story points to the same problem: low-quality gin needed bright acid and mint to be drinkable, and the formula worked well enough to outlive the reason it existed.

The Aviation — gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon, and crème de violette — predates Prohibition slightly but became a Jazz Age staple because the floral, slightly purple drink photographed and performed well in exactly the kind of glamorous room the era was building. Crème de violette fell out of production for most of the 20th century and the drink was frequently served without it; a proper Aviation needs the violette back in.

Whiskey drinks that survived on reputation

The Sazerac, technically pre-Prohibition New Orleans in origin, remained a fixture through the dry years in rooms willing to risk serving it, built on rye, Peychaud's bitters, sugar, and an absinthe rinse — absinthe itself was banned in the U.S. from 1912 until 2007, which meant most Prohibition-era Sazeracs actually used Herbsaint or Pernod as a substitute rinse.

The Mint Julep held on through Prohibition largely in private homes and country clubs with their own stock of legally acquired bourbon, which is part of why it became so associated with old-money Kentucky rather than illegal urban bars — it was a drink for people who never had to worry about supply in the first place.

The champagne cocktails of a champagne-poor decade

The French 75 — gin, lemon, sugar, topped with sparkling wine — takes its name from the French 75mm field gun and dates to World War I, but its popularity through the 1920s owed something to how well a small amount of real champagne could be stretched by mixing it into a cocktail rather than serving it straight, a real consideration when imported sparkling wine was smuggled rather than shipped.

The Sidecar — cognac, orange liqueur, lemon — climbed in popularity partly because cognac, imported and therefore expensive and hard to source domestically during Prohibition, was often cut with citrus and liqueur to make a smaller amount go further across more drinks, a common Prohibition-era economic logic that shaped several classic recipes.

The rescue-mission drinks

The Last Word — equal parts gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, lime — was invented at the Detroit Athletic Club sometime around 1916 to 1920 and nearly vanished entirely until bartender Murray Stenson at Seattle's Zig Zag Café revived it in 2004 after finding the recipe in an old bar guide. It's now one of the most ordered classic cocktails in the country, which makes it a rare case of a Prohibition-adjacent drink getting more famous decades after Prohibition than during it.

The Corpse Reviver No. 2 — gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, lemon, absinthe rinse — was designed, per the joke recipes of the era, as a hangover cure, on the theory that a stiff enough drink the next morning would revive the corpse from the night before. It's strong enough that the old bartender's warning attached to it — 'four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again' — still holds up.

How to order these without sounding like a costume

Most of these drinks are widely enough known now that naming them plainly is all you need — 'a Last Word' or 'a Sidecar' will get you what you want at any bar with a serious classics program. Where it helps to be specific is spirit choice: a Sidecar can be built with cognac or brandy, and asking for it 'with cognac' if that's what you actually want avoids a substitution you might not notice until the first sip.

Questions

What's the easiest Prohibition-era cocktail to make at home?

The Bee's Knees — gin, fresh lemon juice, and honey syrup, shaken and strained — needs no unusual ingredients and is close to foolproof.

Why do so many Prohibition-era cocktails use citrus and sweeteners?

Largely to mask the harshness of home-distilled or smuggled spirits that hadn't been aged or filtered to modern standards. Bright, sweet, and aromatic ingredients did the covering work.

Styles in this guide

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