Smirnoff Vodka Celebrates 75 Years Since Co-Creating the Moscow Mule

22 July 2016 --- Cocktail trends come and go, but no vodka cocktail is more iconic than the Moscow Mule. Today, cocktail menus across America feature the Moscow Mule and creative variations of the recipe—but there's only one original. As the co-creators of the original Moscow Mule in 1941, SMIRNOFF™ vodka and Cock'n Bull® Ginger Beer are celebrating seventy-five years of America's first vodka cocktail.

n the late 1930s, John G. Martin was the president of an American alcohol company, Heublein, which owned the rights to SMIRNOFF™ vodka. One historic day seventy-five years ago, in 1941, Martin sat at the bar of The Cock'n Bull, an iconic pub onHollywood's Sunset Strip, with owner Jack Morgan. At a time when brown spirits were king, Martin was struggling to market his newly acquired vodka to American palates. Morgan, too, had a dilemma: few people cared for or even knew about his ginger beer. Martin and Morgan made cocktail history when they created a solution to sell both products by combining SMIRNOFF™ No. 21 vodka with Cock'n Bull® Ginger Beer and a spritz of lime in a copper mug. This was the world's first Moscow Mule.