In 1995 Adam Seger, still early in his career, accepted a position as the restaurant director for the Seelbach Hotel, a historic location in Louisville, KY. The hotel had fallen on hard times but Adam quick got the restaurant, The Oakroom, turned into one of the top restaurants in the state.

His next challenge was to turn around the hotel bar, the Old Seelbach. Researching old hotel archives Adam stumbled upon a menu and recipe for the Seelbach cocktail. Notes indicated that F. Scott Fitzgerald drank them while stationed in the area when he was training for WW1, and given the drinks history Adam decided to add it back onto the menu. It was an immediate success, and along with other improvements the Old Seelbach bar would go on to be recognized as one of the top 50 bars in the world.

The only problem? Basically none of this is true.

Turns out that Adam made up the story, and the recipe, for the Seelbach cocktail. Everyone had taken him at his word about that old hotel menu, and no one thought to ask to see it. The drink appears in Gaz Regan’s New Classic Cocktails and Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails with the false story that Adam provided. It wasn’t until about 20 years later that Adam came clean and admitted the drinks true origin.

The moral

Telling the history of wine, spirits, and cocktails can be a tricky business. Most of this history is made when folks are in some level of drunken state, and up until the Internet, getting a proper fact check on these stories was tricky at best, near impossible for others. But even recently people didn’t think to questions stories like the one Adam provided.

Nowadays the history of drinks has become a bit more rigorous, but I have no doubt there’s still false claims floating around like the one surrounding the Seelbach Cocktail. What I want you to know is I’m going to share, to the best of my knowledge, only what can and has been proven, or I’ll point out the fabricated stories like this one. But there may be times when I slip up, and I hope that you’ll have a bit of forgiveness to extend if(and likely when) that might happen.

For those interested

The recipe…think of this like a Manhattan with Champagne:

1oz bourbon

½oz Cointreau

7 dashes Angostura bitters

7 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

5oz Champagne

Add all ingredients, except the Champagne, into a mixing glass and stir. Strain into a champagne flute and top with Champagne. Garnish with an orange twist.