Alexander – IBA

The Alexander dates to the early 20th century and was originally made with gin, crème de cacao, and cream, appearing in print in Hugo Ensslin's 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks. Its creation is most often credited to a bartender named Alexander (called Troy or Tony in various tellings) at Rector's, a New York City restaurant, who is said to have devised the pale, creamy drink for a party marking an advertising campaign built around Phoebe Snow, a fictional rail traveler dressed in white; other accounts credit the name to baseball pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander or to other Alexanders of the era, so the true namesake remains disputed. Roughly two decades later, brandy began replacing the gin, with the substitution documented by the 1930s and appearing alongside the original in Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book; some trace this brandy-based version to the 1922 London wedding of Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles, though this too is one of several competing stories. The brandy rendition, known as the Brandy Alexander, eventually eclipsed the gin original in popularity, and it is this cognac-based version that defines the drink as codified today.