What is the Boothby Cocktail? | Alcohol Professor

I imagine that San Francisco is a good place to be a ghost, and perhaps a better place to be a god. We know of at least one man who accomplished both, on top of having a cocktail named after him.

Who was Boothby?

William “Cocktail Bill” Boothby (1862–1930) was born and died in this foggy, freewheeling town, and American bartending has had a little San Francisco in it since. His 1891 American Bar-Tender helped civilize the American bar with 20 specific cocktail recipes; subsequent editions added hundreds more. Rounding out his LinkedIn profile: a stint as a state assemblyman as well as a “presiding deity” at one particularly devout hotel bar north of town. Now in the public domain, you can read the “latest edition” of The World’s Drinks & How to Mix Them from 1908; you won’t find his namesake cocktail in it, although he is believed to have created it.

Bacchus or not, Boothby was hardly the first to mix a cocktail or call it as such. He was, to my knowledge, the first to commission a large outdoor mural of himself with a rooster’s body for a torso and legs, and this artistic gem crowns most reprints of his bartending guide, as does this gracious dedication: “To the liquor dealers of San Francisco [...] Who unanimously assisted in my election to the legislature by an unprecedented majority this work is respectfully dedicated.”

Where to Enjoy a Boothby Cocktail

Today, he’s still bringing San Franciscans together — and his only surviving employer, the Palace Hotel on streetcar-filled Market Street, is a big part of that. Since 2012, they’ve served what’s considered his best creation in the Pied Piper bar.

If you’re ever in San Francisco, journey to the green-leather seats of the bar, about fifty feet north of where Boothby himself mixed before and after the 1906 earthquake. The eponymous Pied Piper of Hamelin, a 16-foot long mural by Maxfield Parrish, engulfs the back wall, and you can take it in over a “Boothby,” marveling what a jigger of champagne will do for what is otherwise a strong Manhattan, bringing out the musty nuttiness of the vermouth and rye, evoking a bouquet of brown spices and whisper of almonds. Like any good cocktail, it’s a simple bit of genius. Speaking of Boothby…

“Working here, you want to preserve the history of the bar, and he’s part of it, “laughs Joel Sale before one Wednesday shift. Sale would know — he’s worked at the Pied Piper thirty years, longer than Boothby ever did.

Part of the Boothby’s placement on Piper’s bar menu is its provenance, with Sale conceding you won’t see it elsewhere on first impressions alone. “Manhattan, sparkling wine... really?” Sale recalls some customers saying. “It’s not a thing where you look and say, ‘yes, sounds good. But it’s alive here and people have it because of the history, and many people like it. [Boothby]’s still here, his legend is still here.” And as the author can tell you, there are few better immortalities than to be drunk daily at the Pied Piper. No word on if a cocktail named after Sale is in the works, but he deserves it.

Celebrating the Boothby & San Francisco’s Distilling History

A final cherry on the cocktail: late in 2023, San Francisco distiller Hotaling & Co released a limited-run and private Boothby Cocktail in honor of their 30th anniversary, a bottle which jazzes up the original riff nicely.

Hotaling & Co. is a new name on an old San Franciscan presence; formerly Anchor Distilling Company of the late Anchor Brewing, whose future continues to be tenuous after owner Sapporo weighed anchor on the brand last summer. So this bottle is particularly sentimental, a nod to two departed legends. In fact, master distiller Bruce Joseph told me, its base of Old Potrero rye whiskey uses the same brewer’s yeast that was the foundation of the brewery’s famed Christmas beer.

Bruce Joseph of Hotaling & Co — Bruce Joseph courtesy of Hotaling & Co

What Boothby was to bartending, Joseph might be distilling — a capable storyteller, a local legend among drinkers and jolly bon vivant who quickly persuaded me to enjoy a few midday glasses at Hotaling’s Pier 50 distillery last fall, within a grand slam’s distance of the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark.

Making of a Modern Boothby

Among other things, I had an opportunity to taste the Boothby Cocktail’s chief component, Hotaling’s Old Potrero straight rye whiskey (128 proof, $90). To make the Boothby bottle, Joseph added Antico vermouth and orange bitters from Luxardo, also part of the Hotaling & Co. family: “For this thirtieth anniversary thing, we wanted to do something that spoke to both sides of our business.” And a fine crossover it is, worth imitating by experiment.

The rye whiskey is a fine foundation. It’s pleasantly nutty, with hints of ground acorns, grated cinnamon, dark amber honey — and manages to avoid the atomic piquancy other ryes seem to delight in. A lot of that earthiness, I think, comes from new finely-grained, charred American oak barrels, to which you can bet Joseph pays special attention. After shuffling through a few hundred photos of his kids, he showed me one of his favorite in-person photos of the pyroclastic process.

Joseph’s first encounter with a Boothby cocktail was, coincidentally, at a party commemorating a re-publication of American Bar-tender by Hotaling & Co. (sold out, but check eBay). His reaction was similar to what the uninitiated at the Pied Piper often tell Joel Sale. “I think that’s the first time I ever had a cocktail that was topped off with champagne. And when they said what it was, I thought ‘that sounds horrible.’ It was really good!”

It is really good. I brought my bottle home for the holidays and enjoyed it up, sans champagne, before making Boothbies for the folks. The prolonged time the orange bitters spent with the vermouth and Potrero rye really drew out the nuttiness in a way only citrus can — think a candied orange garnish atop a warm, homemade nut bread and a touch of anise.

Champagne softened the citrus nicely while bubbling the rest of the flavors to the top, and the now-familiar skepticism towards champagne in a whiskey cocktail quickly dissolved into belief.

Boothby would be proud — which is all you can ask from presiding deities these days.