Скачать или смотреть The White Lady

Harry MacElhone is one of the most influential bartenders in history. Born in Dundee, Scotland he started his career in a bar on 5 rue Daunou in Paris, in 1911. The bar, called the New York Bar, was originally a French bistro turned
into a New York style saloon by Tod Sloan, an American jockey. Mr. Sloan partnered up with a Manhattan bar owner called Clancy and to make the bar genuinely American they packed up and shipped Clancy’s bar in its entirety from New York to Paris. It didn’t take long until the New York bar became a favorite amongst American expats.


In 1914 MacElhone left for the United States where he worked at the Plaza Bar in New York before serving in the Royal Naval Air Service during WWI. After the war he stayed in London to work at Ciro’s Club and this is where his career really took off. At Ciro’s Harry MacElhone invented the first version of the White Lady in 1919, made with crème de menthe, triple sec and lemon, a version that had a good 10 year run. In 1922 he published Harry of Ciro’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails, a book that became so influential it was printed in twelve editions over the next thirty years. The book was later in large part plagiarized by both Harry Craddock and Patrick Gavin Duffy.

MacElhone packed his bags again and moved back to Paris and 5 rue Daunou in 1923. The bar where he used to work was up for sale and, not passing on a great opportunity, he bought it and simply renamed it Harry’s New York Bar. Together with journalist O. O. MacEntyre he created an organization for serious drinkers called the “International Bar Flies” or “Pilier de Bar” in French. The IBF had a book with tongue in cheek rules as well as the bar’s address written as “Sank Roo Doe Noo” for non French speakers. The member list, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gene Kelly and Marlene Dietrich, says a lot about how popular Harry’s bar had become.


In 1929, ten years after the first creation of the White Lady, Mr. MacElhone reinvented the cocktail and changed the crème de menthe to gin making it into one of the most famous classic cocktails.