Drinks

Alcohol and Cocktail

The Famous Cocktail With A Bogus Origin Story By Ben Hillin Aug. 12, 2025 8:20 am EST

The Seelbach cocktail is an interesting one: bourbon, Cointreau, bitters, and champagne. The combination sounds like something you'd make out of desperation when your liquor cabinet is running low. Allegedly, it was created in 1917 when a bartender at the Seelbach hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, accidentally spilled champagne into a Manhattan cocktail — a true classic of bourbon or rye with sweet vermouth, bitters, and a cherry. The bartender loved it so much, he kept it as a drink at the hotel bar. The cocktail was apparently lost to time and the Prohibition era, that is, until 1995, when Adam Seger unearthed an archived hotel menu — and voilà, a star was reborn.

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