Prohibition did not kill the cocktail. It refined it. When the Eighteenth Amendment made alcohol illegal in 1920, it created an unlikely golden age of mixology. Bartenders working in speakeasies from New York to Miami faced a practical problem: the spirits available to them were often rough, poorly distilled, and sometimes genuinely dangerous. The solution was creativity. By combining these imperfect spirits with fresh juices, honey, herbal liqueurs, and aromatic bitters, bartenders transformed the undrinkable into the extraordinary.
Many of the cocktails born or popularized during this era remain the foundation of serious craft cocktails miami bars serve today. Here are eight essential prohibition cocktails, their histories, and what makes each one worth ordering.
The Old Fashioned
The Old Fashioned predates Prohibition by decades, with its origins reaching back to the early 1800s when the word "cocktail" itself simply meant spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. By the time speakeasies emerged, the Old Fashioned was already a classic, and its simplicity made it the perfect vehicle for the era's variable spirits. A well-made Old Fashioned requires only bourbon or rye whiskey, a sugar cube or demerara syrup, a few dashes of Angostura bitters, and an expressed orange peel. The beauty of the drink lies in its restraint: nothing masks the spirit, yet the sugar and bitters round its edges into something smooth and deeply satisfying.
During Prohibition, ordering an Old Fashioned was a statement of confidence in your bartender and your speakeasy. It meant the establishment had access to whiskey good enough to drink nearly straight. Today, the Old Fashioned remains the benchmark by which many judge a bar's seriousness. If you want to dive deeper into this essential drink, read our complete guide to the art of the Old Fashioned.
The Manhattan
Like the Old Fashioned, the Manhattan predates Prohibition, with its origins commonly traced to the Manhattan Club in New York City in the 1870s. The drink combines rye whiskey (traditionally) or bourbon with sweet vermouth and aromatic bitters, stirred until silky and served in a coupe or cocktail glass with a brandied cherry.
The Manhattan thrived during Prohibition for a practical reason: sweet vermouth was still legally available, and its rich, herbal sweetness did an excellent job of smoothing out the harsh edges of bootleg whiskey. Speakeasy bartenders discovered that the ratio could be adjusted depending on the quality of their spirits, using more vermouth when the whiskey was rough and backing it off when better stock arrived. This adaptability helped the Manhattan survive the dry years largely unchanged, and it remains one of the most ordered classic cocktails in serious bars worldwide.
The Sidecar
The Sidecar's exact origin is disputed, with both the Ritz Hotel in Paris and Harry's New York Bar claiming credit, but the drink firmly established itself during the Prohibition era. It combines cognac or brandy with orange liqueur (traditionally Cointreau) and fresh lemon juice, shaken and served in a sugar-rimmed coupe glass.
The Sidecar represents an important principle in prohibition-era mixology: the sour formula. By balancing a base spirit with citrus and sweetener, bartenders could create drinks that were both complex and forgiving. The orange liqueur in the Sidecar does double duty, providing sweetness and a complementary flavor that elevates the cognac without competing with it. For American speakeasy patrons who could get their hands on French brandy smuggled through the Caribbean, the Sidecar was a taste of Continental sophistication in the middle of enforced austerity.
The French 75
Named for the 75-millimeter field gun used by the French army in World War I, the French 75 is a cocktail that hits with similar force beneath an elegant exterior. The classic recipe calls for London dry gin, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and champagne, combined to create a drink that is simultaneously light and potent.
The French 75 gained popularity in speakeasies because champagne, despite being alcoholic, occupied a grey area during Prohibition. It was associated with celebration and sophistication, and access to real French champagne signaled that a speakeasy had serious connections. The cocktail also had the practical advantage of stretching expensive champagne by combining it with gin and citrus. The result was festive enough for special occasions yet refined enough for an ordinary Tuesday evening when the ordinary was anything but.
The Bee's Knees
If one cocktail perfectly embodies the creative necessity of the Prohibition era, it is the Bee's Knees. This drink was specifically designed to make bathtub gin palatable. The recipe is disarmingly simple: gin, fresh lemon juice, and honey syrup. That is all. But the combination is alchemical. The honey wraps around the botanical harshness of poor-quality gin while the lemon juice provides brightness and cuts through the sweetness.
The name itself is period slang, "the bee's knees" meant "the best" in 1920s parlance, and the drink earned the title. What makes the Bee's Knees remarkable is that it remains delicious even when made with excellent gin. A cocktail born of necessity became one that endures on its own merits. The Bee's Knees is also a perfect introduction for those new to gin cocktails, offering a gentle entry point that reveals the spirit's floral and herbal character without overwhelming the palate.
The Last Word
Created at the Detroit Athletic Club during Prohibition, the Last Word is an equal-parts cocktail that combines gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice. It was largely forgotten after Prohibition ended, surviving only in a handful of bartender's notebooks, until it was rediscovered by Seattle bartender Murray Stenson in 2004. Its revival has made it one of the most celebrated rediscoveries of the modern craft cocktail movement.
The Last Word is a bartender's cocktail, complex, herbaceous, and slightly challenging. The green Chartreuse, a French herbal liqueur made from 130 botanical ingredients by Carthusian monks, gives the drink a distinctive depth that evolves with every sip. The equal-parts construction means no single element dominates; instead, all four ingredients engage in a delicate balancing act. Ordering a Last Word at a bar is a reliable way to test whether the bartenders know their craft. If they smile when you order it, you are probably in the right place.
The Corpse Reviver No. 2
Originally published in Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, the Corpse Reviver No. 2 was intended as a morning-after restorative, a "corpse reviver" in the literal sense. The recipe calls for gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, fresh lemon juice, and a rinse of absinthe, and Craddock himself noted that "four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again."
The Corpse Reviver No. 2 is a masterclass in balance. The absinthe rinse provides an aromatic backdrop without overpowering the other ingredients. The Lillet adds a gentle, wine-like bitterness that keeps the drink from becoming cloying. It is a cocktail that rewards attention: drink it slowly and you will notice how the flavors shift as the ice melts and the temperature changes. As a testament to Prohibition-era ingenuity, it demonstrates how bartenders of the era thought about cocktails as multi-layered compositions rather than simple mixed drinks.
The Southside
The Southside is often attributed to the speakeasies of Chicago's South Side, where it was allegedly the house cocktail of establishments connected to organized crime figures. Whether the origin story is entirely accurate or partly embellished by time, the drink itself is impeccable: gin, fresh lime juice, simple syrup, and muddled mint, shaken vigorously and double-strained into a chilled glass.
Think of the Southside as the gin-based answer to the Mojito, but more refined. The mint is fully integrated through shaking rather than simply garnished, distributing its cooling character throughout the drink. Like the Bee's Knees, the Southside was designed to improve bad gin, and like the Bee's Knees, it is even better with good gin. The Southside is particularly well-suited to Miami's warm climate, offering a crispness and herbaceous freshness that feels right in the subtropical air.
Why These Cocktails Endure
These eight cocktails have survived for a reason. They are not museum pieces or novelties to be ordered ironically. They are genuinely excellent drinks, each one a testament to the bartender's art under the most challenging conditions. The lesson of Prohibition-era mixology is that constraint breeds creativity: when your ingredients are limited and your spirits are imperfect, you learn to make every element count.
When you sit at a speakeasy bar and order one of these classics, you are participating in a tradition that has been refined over a century. The bartender who makes your Bee's Knees or your Last Word is inheriting and extending the work of nameless speakeasy bartenders who solved the same problems of balance and flavor long before the tools of modern mixology existed. That is worth raising a glass to.