Red Apple

The Red Apple is built like the Washington Apple, a whiskey, sour apple liqueur, and cranberry juice cocktail that emerged as a popular bar shot and short drink in the late 1980s and 1990s. It was often built with Canadian whisky and served as a party shooter before appearing in longer cocktail form. A colorful creation story circulates widely. In it, a carpenter named Christof Guycoogan, working amid a pest infestation that ruined Washington state's apple crop, spilled the juice of rotten apples into his whiskey and cranberry drink and went on to distill the spoiled fruit into an apple liqueur. This account traces to a self-published 2021 e-book by Randy Woodward, a Seattle-area bartending writer. No independent record of Guycoogan or of the crop failure has been found, and researchers treat the tale as unverified folklore rather than documented history.

Separately, a longer version built with vodka, apple juice, lime, and grenadine and served as a layered drink called the Washington Red Apple has been credited to bartender Wayne Collins of London in the late 1990s to early 2000s. That drink differs from the whiskey-based Red Apple in base spirit and construction.