International Women’s Day Celebrations
This year we had a record number of requests from companies to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Most companies chose a virtual cocktail making class and some of these featured bespoke cocktails designed around their company’s brand, some of them were renamed after influential women at the company and others simply treated all the women to some fun cocktail making and socialising. ๐ฅณ๐
One of the events was for Afua Donkor and her team at Reddit. They celebrated with 22 of their female colleagues from the UK & Ireland by shaking up 2 slight variations of our most loved cocktails with our head mixologist, Cammy!
๐ธ Raspberry Flip: Featuring Baileys, Raspberry Syrup and topped with crushed raspberries & chocolate.
๐น Peachy Bum: Featuring Disaronno, Peach, Cherry and finished with a custom printed garnish depicting Reddit’s famous robot (pictured).
Cammy who hosted the class and is a Director at Boozy Events said “I had great fun hosting this masterclass and teaching the ladies some new cocktail skills. Having had a strong female influence in my upbringing, the celebration of International Women’s Day is something I recognise personally as being very important. Plus, women make up 65% of our team at Boozy!”
๐ Reddit’s Women’s Day Subreddit: reddit.com/t/womens_day/
Women, Beer & Brewing
Typically, the image of pubs and breweries are synonymous with men, but in preparation for the classes, we found that prior to the industrial revolution, brewing and distilling were predominantly done by women.
It makes sense too, as going by the history books, the men were out pillaging, hunting and farming. While women were the ones working with plants, foraging, grinding up grains, and cooking up brews, which were inevitably fermented.
These roles developed organically but were so profound that in ancient cultures they were perceived as divine appointments. In all ancient societies and mythology beer was a gift to women from a goddess NEVER a male god.
- Mayahuel – a female deity associated with the maguey plant among cultures of central Mexico – is the spirit of the agave plant from which we get tequila.
- Hathor in Egypt, her temple was celebrated as โthe place of drunkennessโ.
- Norse Vikings only allowed women to brew the ale that gave them the ferocity they needed in battle.
- Most famously Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of brewing, to whom the earliest recipe of beer was dedicated.
Women were the elite of the brewing industry. Catherine Carpenter developed the first recipe for sour mash in the Americas. (Check out this article for more info: https://kentuckyancestors.org/the-sour-mash-whiskey-recipe-of-catherine-carpenter/)
Cocktails
When it comes to cocktails, Women have certainly had an influence with these notable examples:
Valentine Goesart and Anne Davidov. They fought for the right for women to be able to serve behind a bar. Valentine was a barmaid in Michigan in the 1940โs who fought to win back her bartender’s license. Anne was a feminist lawyer. They did not initially succeed, but appeared in front of the Supreme Court and were inspirational to other women in the industry who followed them. The law was finally repealed in 1950.
Ada Coleman worked as a bartender in the โAmerican barโ at the Savoy hotel. She was the first woman to have her professional work recognised. Creator of the Hanky Panky which was inspired by the actor Charles Hawtrey who frequented the Savoy Bar.
Jenny Churchill was the mother of Winston Churchill. We all know about the “Manhattan” from โSex in the Cityโ but it actually originated in the Manhattan club in 1874 when Jenny Churchill threw a party there.