World Cocktail Day occurs every May 13. It’s a day set aside to globally recognize and celebrate the joy of cocktails—so, it’s a big one. World Cocktail Day is also Bevvy’s birthday. We’ve been writing about cocktails and spirits for nearly 16 years, with 11 of those years falling under the Bevvy brand.
Bevvy was founded on the inspiration that beverages bring people together. We still believe in a good drink’s power to drive conversations and cultural exchange, so we wanted to take this moment to provide a brief history of the cocktail, and of Bevvy, as we celebrate our 11th birthday.
A Brief History of the Cocktail
The event celebrated by World Cocktail Day is the May 13, 1806 publication of the word “cock-tail” in the Balance and Columbian Repository, a New York newspaper. The word was used to describe “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.”
Turns out, the word “cock-tail/cocktail” was used even earlier than that, but May 13 would go down in history as World Cocktail Day.
The spirituous drink known as the cocktail evolved over time and went through through many ups and downs — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Beginning in 1990s and early 2000s, folks like Sasha Petraske, Julie Reiner, Dale Degroff, Audrey Saunders, David Wondrich, and a host of other key individuals kickstarted the modern cocktail renaissance that has shaped the cocktail and drinks culture we know today. So we can thank them, and the many talented bartenders who followed, for all the good cocktails available on menus across the country.
A Brief History of Bevvy
We started from humble beginnings, and over the years never lost sight of the idea behind Bevvy — which is to help the world learn more about cocktails and other well-crafted beverages, and to share this with as many people as possible.
The genesis for Bevvy started as a simple idea. After spending many years building several of the world’s most trafficked recipe websites, Jay Hung witnessed the power of food in bringing people together. At Food Network, Jay saw how the stories behind the food and the personalities telling those stories contributed to entertaining and educational content. Similarly at Food.com, he learned to appreciate the vast community of aspiring home chefs creating easy-to-follow recipes for well-made dishes that anyone could cook at home. At that time, online drinks information was incredibly fragmented, and while good information existed, it was not always easy to find. Jay was eager to do for drinks what he had helped to do for food.
A software engineer and former bartender, Jay began compiling a comprehensive database of cocktail recipes and whiskey products under his technology company Mixture Labs. Over time, he added rum, gin, mezcal, tequila, cognac, brandy, and other spirit categories. As new recipes are often inspired by — and variations of — existing recipes, Jay built a variations feature right into the product, capturing the interconnected relationships between similar recipes. To ensure the quality of the product, Jay employed a curation system to highlight and increase visibility of the best cocktails and spirits. And to ensure that the product connected to everyday people and not just industry insiders, Jay placed an emphasis on using approachable, inclusive language that anyone could follow.
On World Cocktail Day — May 13, 2014 — Jay launched his drinks database at bevvy.co and called it Bevvy, enabling anyone in the world with an Internet connection to find curated drinks information. Product Hunt dubbed Bevvy as “the GitHub of drinks.” Not long after, Bevvy spun out of Mixture Labs as Bevvy Inc.
Across the country, Kevin Gray — a food and beverage writer and former bartender — also recognized the power of drinks and the stories behind them. He launched a drinks blog called Cocktail Enthusiast back in 2009, becoming one of the earlier online outlets dedicated to covering cocktails, spirit reviews, and industry news. The CE team also interviewed bartenders, distillers, brands, and other personalities, sharing their stories and allowing a small glimpse into the lives of the people helping to shape and move the drinks industry forward. In 2017, Cocktail Enthusiast teamed up with Bevvy and folded its content into the site.
For 16 years, we’ve been publishing and sharing good drinks, and bringing millions of people together online to learn about cocktails, whiskey, rum, gin, mezcal, and other spirits. Let’s raise a glass to 16 more. Happy World Cocktail Day, and happy birthday to us.
Cheers,
Jay & Kevin
