Lies, Damn Lies, and Company History Advertising Stories

If it don’t kick, then it ain’t a mule!

There is a saying among my friends that every new job needs a new power tool! Their wives never seem to agree but we hold out that it is an undeniable fact of nature that cannot be resisted. Well, I’m starting to think that a variation of this rule might apply to anything. This seems to be borne out by the fact that almost every cocktail needs a new ingredient, and in the case of the Moscow Mule, I had to put it off a couple of weeks while I tracked down the copper mug needed to make the drink authentic.

Now it’s this mug that features in one of the histories of the Mule, and it’s a great story but, just like the location where the cocktail is said to have been created, I think it’s a load of Cock & Bull.

So here we go…

The history of the Moscow Copper Co. claims that in 1941 Sophie Berezinski decided to emigrate from her home in Russia and move to America. Sophie’s father owned and operated a copper goods factory known as the Moscow Copper Co. and Sophie had designed a copper mug which unfortunately wasn’t selling and so she loaded up 2000 copper mugs into her wagon and headed east, or west, or whichever direction you would head to get from Moscow to America with 2000 copper mugs.

On landing in her new home, her luck in selling the mugs was no better and in a moment of despair she found herself in the Cock & Bull pub in Hollywood. There is no mention in the story of her travels, so I’m interested in how she got her copper mugs from East coast to West coast, unless of course she trekked through Alaska to get to California!

In the Cock & Bull, as luck would have it, John Martin who had purchased the floundering Smirnoff vodka distillers was talking to Jack Morgan, owner of the pub, and who had an over abundance of his own brand of ginger beer in the cellar. They were discussing how to deal with each of their problems and with the help of Sophie who needed to offload some copper mugs, they created the now world-renowned Moscow Mule, and they all lived happily ever after!

It's a lovely story, great for marketing the Moscow Copper Company’s mugs, but I’m afraid I’m calling BS on it.

There’s another version from New York that omits Sophie and her cartload of copper mugs but has Morgan and Martin in a hotel where they decide that the strategy to move their vodka and ginger beer is to create a cocktail. This one also sounds pretty far fetched, and so my favourite is that it was invented by a bartender called Wes Price in the Cock & Bull pub who made one for the actor Broderick Crawford. He said “I just wanted to clean out the basement, I was trying to get rid of a lot of dead stock”. And so the Moscow Mule was created out of a need to clear unsold vodka and ginger beer to make room for more stock.

Less romantic, maybe. More plausible, definitely!

Which one do you think is Cock & Bull?

Tune back in next week for my view of the drink.

Moscow Mule

IBA Category - Contemporary Classic

• 45 ml Smirnoff Vodka

• 10 ml Lime Juice

• 120 ml Ginger Beer

• 1 lime wedge

Combine the vodka and ginger beer in a copper mug filled with ice. Add lime juice. Stir gently. Garnish with the lime wedge.

For a review and follow up, see here →