The Bourbon Rickey As Shakespearean Tragedy

An ode to one of my favorite drinks, and one of my least favorite political lobbyists

Welcome to Tipple of Tea, a feature of Encyclopedia Sonia dedicated to the wonderful world of brewing teas and cocktails — and combining them? So grab your favorite tipple or your favorite tea, and settle in for the first of many drink-themed posts.

One of my favorite cocktails to make at home is the bourbon rickey. It’s three ingredients, it’s easy to make, and it tastes wonderful. The older sibling of the infinitely more popular gin rickey and the originator of the whole “rickey” phenomenon, the bourbon rickey also has an interesting historical and political connection in the form of its eponymous first drinker, Colonel Joe Rickey. (Spoiler alert: Joe Rickey kind of majorly sucks.) Also, the whole story has the structure of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Act I: Exposition

SHOOMAKER’S BAR, WASHINGTON D.C., 1883 — The bourbon rickey (also known as the “Joe Rickey” or “lime rickey”) first appeared eighteen years after the end of the Civil War. Its namesake, Joe Rickey, had been a colonel — on the Confederate side (see, I told you he sucked) — and by the 1880s he made his living as a lobbyist and whiled away his days at Shoomaker’s Bar in Washington, D.C. (Rickey would later become co-owner of the bar.)

Act II: Rising Action

WASHINGTON D.C., 1880s-1890s — It’s unclear how exactly the bourbon rickey came to be. Some anecdotes say that Rickey himself invented the drink, due to his love of bourbon and inability to drink it straight (therefore leading to the combo with club soda), and a health-kick streak that led him to add lemon “to get a healthful drink.” Others say that the Shoomaker’s bartender, George Williamson either created the drink or got the recipe from a gentleman from the Caribbean, before serving it to Joe Rickey, who was a big fan and brought it into fashion.

Not much is available on the personal or political career of Rickey beyond this. However, I was able to unearth a few factoids:

• Rickey was a Democratic lobbyist. (This was long before Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy flipped the Democrat/Republican constituencies in the 1970s.) What exactly he lobbied for or against seems to be lost to history. However, a 1903 article in the St. Louis Republic suggests that he played his cards close to his chest when it came to his political views. The Republic stated, “Only one thing did he ever make clear to his real political convictions that he was not a civil service reformer.”
• He mainly conducted his lobbying business through gambling or extravagant dinners. Rickey was often a successful gambler — thanks more, I think, to frequent insider information trading than to his own skill or luck.
• Rickey was, by all accounts, a successful lobbyist in his heyday. A number of sources mention him dining with important and politically powerful individuals. Little did he know, however, how soon this would all change.

For now, however, the bourbon rickey, or “Joe Rickey” as his friends nicknamed the drink, was quickly becoming one of the most popular drinks in America.

Act III: Climax

WASHINGTON D.C., 1890s — Upon his death in 1903, it was reported that Rickey was overheard saying,

“Only a few years ago, I was Col. Rickey, of Missouri, the friend of senators, judges and statesmen and something of an authority on political matters and political movements. … But am I ever spoken of for those reasons? I fear not. No, I am known to fame as the author of the ‘rickey,’ and I have to be satisfied with that. There is one consolation in the fact that there are fashions in drinks. The present popularity of the Scotch high ball may possibly lose me my reputation and restore me my former fame. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished for.”

The popularity of the bourbon rickey, originally simply a way to kick back after a long day at work, now overshadowed Rickey himself. Bourbon rickeys were in high fashion in Washington, D.C., and everyone wanted one. And now, everyone thought of him as “that guy who invented that drink” instead of “esteemed politician, lobbyist, etcetera, etcetera.” It’d be like if Greta Thunberg ended up being remembered for the “Thunberg cocktail” instead of her climate change advocacy.

The kicker? Joe Rickey didn’t even like bourbon rickeys that much. He preferred the lemon version, stating to a newspaper in 1900:

“About this time the use of limes became fairly common, and one afternoon an experimenter tried the effect of lime juice instead of lemon juice in the drink, and from that time on all ‘rickey’ were made from limes. I never drink the lime juice combination myself because I think the lemon acid is mellower and more beneficial.”

Act IV: Falling Action

WASHINGTON D.C. OR MISSOURI OR SOMETHING, LATE 1890s — Not much was written about Joe Rickey during this period. Overshadowed by his namesake, he retreated to lick his wounds in obscurity, giving only the occasional newspaper interview about the bourbon rickey.

Act V: Catastrophe!

NEW YORK CITY, 1900 — To add insult to injury, not only was Joe Rickey overshadowed by a drink that stole his name, that drink didn’t even remain popular for that long (and Rickey never got his longed-for reputation back). By the time the twentieth century rolled around, the bourbon rickey had been replaced in the public consciousness by the gin rickey — a drink which, unlike the bourbon rickey, has withstood the test of time. But it still took the Rickey name, and Joe Rickey apparently hated the gin-for-bourbon substitution.

On a trip to New York in 1900, Rickey reportedly commented:

“Only in New York was it perverted and made a thing of shame. Here they make it with gin, which is a liquor no gentleman could ever bring himself to drink.”

Rickey took his own life in 1903 — perhaps (but hopefully not) due to the fallout from the invention of the bourbon rickey.

Fame Long After Death

Like any Shakespearean tragedy, the story of Joe Rickey and his eponymous drink continue to find fame over a hundred years later. In 2011, Washingtonians designated the rickey D.C.’s official cocktail. And the gin rickey remains a relatively popular option in bars to this day (sorry, ghost of Col. Joe Rickey).

The Recipe

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for (if you haven’t Googled it already): the recipe for a bourbon rickey.

• 1.5 to 2 oz. bourbon, whiskey, or rye
• 4–8 oz. club soda
• half a lime’s worth of juice (but like Col. Joe, I think a lemon half tastes better — the man was by all accounts awful, but he has good taste in drinks)
• cubed ice, if you want it

Add the ice, then the bourbon, then the lime (or lemon) juice, then the soda in a tall glass. Voilà — a bourbon rickey.

I hope you learned something from this post. If you did, please consider sharing it!

Further Reading

Not much is available out there beyond the Wikipedia page, but some sources you might consider checking out are:

• Angel’s Envy Distillery’s Joe Rickey recipe (it also provides some information on Joe Rickey the person)
• Imbibe! From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, A Salute in Stories and Drinks to “Professor” Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar by David Wondrich (New York, NY: Perigee Book/Penguin 2007) — I haven’t read this one myself but it’s cited by most of the other sources I consulted
• “Whiskey Joe Rickey is Cool, Lemon or Lime,” by Gaz Regan (SF Chronicle, June 12, 2011)
• “Not Cocktail of the Week #111: The Rickey,” by a Reddit user (r/cocktails on Reddit, 2017)
• “Try a Bourbon Rickey, the Original Rickey Cocktail,” by Supercall (Thrillist, 2019)
• “The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of the Gin Rickey,” by Nick Hines (Vine Pair, 2016)
• “History Lesson: The Gin Rickey,” by Ted Haigh (Imbibe, 2009)

Note: Sourcing is sparse on this particular topic, so I’ve included references that I normally wouldn’t on any other topic — for example, the Reddit post.

Encyclopedia Sonia is also available as a free newsletter, if Substack’s more your thing.