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> And an "Irish pub" is really a 1990s phenomenon

That is an extraordinary conclusion which requires a bit more evidence than you're putting forward.

Another interpretation of the data is that the entire idea of a bar, pub, or corner bar was Irish by default until the 90's, when it became necessary to distinguish between different types of bars.

As an older fellow, my memory from well before the 90's is that what we think of now as an "Irish Pub" would have just been called "a bar" back in the day.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/03/irelan...

  Ireland, as much of the world knows it, was invented 
  in 1991. That year, the Irish Pub Company formed with
  a mission to populate the world with authentic Irish bar

That article manages to make its claim by focusing entirely on Irish pubs in Ireland and completely ignoring Irish-American pubs, which have been flourishing in the United States since before the Civil War.

Like McSorley's Old Ale House in NYC, for instance, which has been operating at the same location since at least the 1860s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McSorley%27s_Old_Ale_House). Most Northern cities of any size will have had similar establishments set up at roughly the same time, though it's rare to find one that's been in continuous operation for so long.

I would venture to guess that when people think of an "Irish pub," nearly all of what they're thinking of comes out of the Irish-American pub tradition. The program described in the article just takes all that stuff and wraps it into an "official Irish" package that's easy to franchise.

focusing entirely on Irish pubs in Ireland

My God! Ireland's annexed Kazakhstan and the Canary Islands?!!!!

From TFA:

In the last 15 years, Dublin-based IPCo and its competitors have fabricated and installed more than 1,800 watering holes in more than 50 countries. Guinness threw its weight (and that of its global parent Diageo) behind the movement, and an industry was built around the reproduction of "Irishness" on every continent—and even in Ireland itself. IPCo has built 40 ersatz pubs on the Emerald Isle, opening them beside the long-standing establishments on which they were based.

The Irish pub predates that by a long way. In Ireland, that is.

As a commercial chain operation exporting an ersatz experience, the early 90s sounds right. But there have been individual establishments with an Irish clientele and atmosphere in most places where a high density of Irish emigrants ended up. See for example Doyle's Cafe in Boston.

Again, my point: if you look at the written record, "Irish Pub" emerges largely as a 1990s thing. The Slate article confirms this by noting the commercialization and corporatization of the concept.

I had a look at Google Groups.

["irish pub" site:groups.google.com] and then using more tools to select a custom date range of anything before 1995 means you get zero hits, but if you change the date to anything before 1998 you start to get a few hits, but these seem to be "pubs where Irish people drink" rather than "Irish theme pubs".

This was surprising to me because I have false memories of "Irish Pubs" (the packaged experience, not pubs with Irish customers) from early 1990.

Edit: wait - I should have probably tried this with "Irish bar"?

"Irish Bar" does in fact track far better over time. Though with that notable 1920s uptick:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Irish+Pub%2C+I...

Actually, its heyday was 1794 - 1886:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Irish+Pub%2CIr...

(And yeah, there's a reason I used URL shorteners earlier.)

Aha. You now have achieved a solid comprehension of the obvious.

Americans call small neighborhood type buildings where people gather to drink alcohol "bars" not "pubs" as a general rule.

I am an American of Irish descent who quite enjoys the type of drinking establishment you are currently discussing. I have never once in my life called one an "Irish Pub" though I have used the expressions dive bar, corner bar, or just bar, thousands of times.

Your methodology here is deeply suspect.

Yes, and using precisely the same logic, Starbucks invented the coffee shop.

Slight uptick, but no, your trivially verified premise is in fact false:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cafe%2Ccaffe%2...

Though the pre-1820 popularity of "cafe" is an interesting story itself I'll leave to the enterprising reader:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cafe&year_star...

I believe it. In the little midwest town I was living at the time in the mid 90's "Irish Pubs" started appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Somehow St. Patrick celebrations and "Irish Pride Heritage" was also started to get popular.

Even some highschool people who had no Irish heritage decided they wanted to be "Irish". One hung the Irish flag in his room, smoked pipe tobacco, and wore a green kilt to parties.

It was Irish-mania.

Ngram viewer supports you on "St. Patricks Day" (though "St. Patrick's Day" shows less growth):

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=St.+Patricks+D...

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/03/irelan...

> The part that wasn't particularly surprising was that mixed drinks and cocktails, along with associated terms ("cocktail hour", "cocktail party") date to U.S. Prohibition, when bootleg (and low-quality) hard liquor had to be mixed with other ingredients to become drinkable.

That's not totally true - Jerry Thomas published How to Mix Drinks or The Bon-Vivant’s Companion in 1862. Punch (sort of the precursor to cocktails) has been around even longer.

Not to mention cocktail the term dates to the early 1800s.

"Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else"

Also, the Old Fashioned cocktail was created in the later 1800s to bring back the cocktails from the earlier 1800s instead of the garish concoctions that the contemporary bars were mixing. Ironic that until the craft cocktail revolution that modern Old Fashioneds included the "garbage" that the original was eschewing

Indeed.

Folks who are really interested ought to read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399532870/

I'm very glad that Old Tom Gin is finally starting to become available again.

I've updated my post with the ngram for "cocktail, cocktail hour, cocktail party, cocktail lounge", from 1850-2008: http://goo.gl/EBXM87

You'll find that as with the others I've cited, it shows a rapid and dramatic growth during Prohibition, to levels not achieved previously, and which have been maintained since.

Subsequent peaks in 1953, 1985, and 2002.

I'm aware that "appearance in print" is only a proxy for cultural prevalence. But it's a good one.

Part of the problem here is that cocktail meant a fairly specific band of mixed drinks in pre-prohibition days, but it grew into a generic catch all. Drinks which would have had a specific term back them (e.g. Flip) would show up on a cocktail list today

Are you aware of another widely-used signifier for mixed drinks that could be used?

I'm aware of some European uses (mostly liqueurs) that may date to earlier. Premium, or even non-premium, alcohol consumption habits really aren't a personal specialty.

Hi - in the 100-200 year ago range you'd probably need to search for all the subcategories which today would just get pushed under "cocktail". I don't know of a single term which would embody that concept from back then.

> What was more surprising was that the vast majority of branded alcohols dated to no earlier than the 1950s.

I can't cite, but I've read that before Prohibition, you pretty much went to a bar and ordered "whiskey", "rum" or whatever booze by style, but not by brand name. There wasn't much in the way of differentiation in the market. But during Prohibition, drinking random booze had a real risk of getting you sick, blinded or dead.

This was because 1) A lot of alcohol was still being produced for industrial uses. 2) To enforce Prohibition, that industrial alcohol was treated with additives to make it disgusting and poisonous to drink. 3) To fill the still-existing market for booze, some people sold alcohol that was made to be industrial but later had the additives (mostly) extracted.

During that time, having a trusted source of quality booze (booze that won't kill you) was suddenly very valuable. Good sources started the branding process to capitalize on that new market demand. Those who branded well grew. And, the rest is history.

Using the Google Books ngram viewer doesn't seem to be the best source for determining the age of alcohol brands. The dates you present are no where near the actual ages of the brands. Smirnoff and Bacardi were both founded in the 1860s, Beefeater and Jack Daniels the 1870s, Gordon's is from 1769, and Remy Martin is from 1724 (source: Wikipedia).

The ngram viewer, you're correct, doesn't clearly indicate the origin date of several of these names.

But you can bet your patootie it shows you when they emerged into common and popular usage. And that's the point I'm making here.

Yes, some of those brands "existed" going back through history to dates earlier than U.S. Prohibition. I explored that aspect in an earlier question to reddit's /r/AskHistorians, and from what I could glean from that, while the names existed they were largely as small and local establishments. Not the national conglomerates we've got today.

Most large alcohol brands underwent a revolution in the post-WWII era. Many far more recently than that.

You're putting far too much faith into the contents and completeness of Google's searchable archives. Newspapers and a selection of contemporary books may be a reasonable guide for broad trends and significant events, but in no way can they be relied upon to contain every little detail of the world around them.

I'd welcome an alternate credible source which demonstrates an alternate conclusion.

Otherwise you're simply hand-waving (along with numerous others here).

I have substantiated the general conclusions with a number of other avenues of research. I suspect they're sound.

Wouldn't a lot of that be due to globalization? No sense in advertising Remy Martin to people in revolutionary New York when the cost of transporting a bottle there would have been obscene.

More on "globalization" -- late 1990s onward:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=globalization&...

Wait, are you saying that the concept of "globalization" didn't exist prior to the late 1990s? Most historians seem to agree that it has existed as far back as ancient Greece if not further.

If you are just measuring how frequently the word appears in popular usage, I don't see how that really has any bearing on the actual phenomenon. I don't think you are going to dispute that gravity existed and had a major impact prior to 1616 are you?

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22gravity%22&...

(Side note, if you put your search term in quotes it generates totally different results than if it's alone, in any case, I'm pretty sure that gravity existed before it started to take off in the media in the 1650s.)

"Globalization" really wasn't much of a thing in the 1950s.

Mass-merchandising, mass-media, a consumer economy, TV and radio advertising, and expendable income were all things, however.

One of the key differences before and after prohibition was who controlled the sale of what booze.

Before prohibition, a majority of saloons were 'tied-houses', meaning they bought from a single brewery. (Part of this was due to the massive industrialization of brewing by a few highly successful companies) Fierce competition between local saloons ensued, and larger brewers would fight marketing and price wars against local competitors, driving them out of the market.

Their marketing and sales tactics also contributed to the abundance of 'social ills' that were part of the argument for prohibition in the first place. The Anti-Saloon League was actually the most powerful lobby for prohibition, beating out both the Women's Christian Temperance Union and Prohibition Party combined.

To combat the problems brought by saloon monopoloy, new legislation after prohibition required brewers to be separated from the retail operation by the requirement of wholesalers for distribution. Once brewers no longer had a monopoly on a given retailer, all earlier concepts of branding and marketing changed. No longer would you go to a 'Pabst saloon' (which was the only viable saloon in town), but instead just any local saloon, tavern or bar, and select one of the local brews.

There are older cocktails - e.g. the Sazerac, the Gin fizz, and related drinks which were refined in the late 1800s. The Mint Julep (which you may not accept as a cocktail) goes way back further.

It is probably true that fussier drinks are more recent, but there are probably plenty of specialty drinks that have simply been forgotten.

If you are researching names you know, you will probably come up with a newer pedigree.

Also it is unfair to be lumping cocktails together with "branded alcohol", though it is true the brands have had a hand in pushing cocktails, they didn't invent the idea.

[edit: 1862 bartender's guide to mixed drinks] https://books.google.com/books?id=QDUEAAAAYAAJ&dq=Bar-Tender...

Also the gin and tonic, a result of British Imperialism encountering Tropical Disease.

Again: the historical record, indicated by prevalence in the Ngram viewer, suggests a fairly recent emergence in the general public discussion of both cocktails and branded liquor.

Bombay Sapphire is a product of the 1987. I had always assumed it was some sort of old liquor back from when India was controlled by the Brits. I'm sure that was their goal.

Quite.

I was first introduced to the concept of alcohol branding by way of the wine industry (at one point Pepsi, by way of Diageo, owned a number of Napa Valley properties). The "fake rustic / family / small one-off" vibe of a great many wineries, breweries, distilleries, bars, etc., is little but a show.

Though yes, there are also genuine family-owned outfits. They just don't have hundred-million-dollar advertising budgets. Well, except for the Gallos.

On Diageo's holdings: "Diageo's brands include Smirnoff (the world's best-selling vodka),[7] Johnnie Walker (the world's best-selling blended Scotch whisky),[8] Baileys (the world's best-selling liqueur),[9] and Guinness (the world's best-selling stout).[10][11] It also owns 34% of Moët Hennessy, which owns brands including Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot and Hennessy.[12][13] It sells its products in over 180 countries and has offices in around 80 countries."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diageo

Speaking of Veuve Clicquot, another fun rabbit hole to go down is to examine all the holdings of its majority owner, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LVMH

They own everything from Louis Vuitton to Dom Pérignon to Veuve to Fendi and beyond.

The company has (very wisely) somewhat cornered the market on goods for the aspirationally wealthy. And the people who aspire to be apirationally wealthy. I've got a bottle of JW Blue and Veuve right now.

You know you're kind of being played when you buy it, but they provide a nice experience and a nice looking product, in addition to a decent to good product.

Guinness has quite a long ngram history, and I suspect that most of it is due to the stout. It goes down during Prohibition, though if you switch to British English it continues upwards during that era.

FWIW, http://www.pre-pro.com/midacore/snyder.php says there wasn't a national trademark protection before 1905. That would have given only 15 years for a national brand to assert itself before prohibition.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/18/what-every-president-drank/ says that Wilson's campaign song "Wilson's. That's all" came from a then popular whiskey brand. That would have been before prohibition. The brand was: Wilson "That's All" Old Label Blended Whiskey. There's a picture of a bottle at https://www.pinterest.com/engraver26/beer-booze-bottles-labe... , but that's a post-prohibition bottle.

There are some pre-prohibition brands at https://www.sweeney-emporium.com/cgi-bin/go.pl?session=a2bjr... .

Apparently there were plenty of brands pre-prohibition. So I think what you're seeing is that the most popular drinks now don't have a long history, not that brands are a result of prohibition.

what you're seeing is that the most popular drinks now don't have a long history, not that brands are a result of prohibition.

That's a possibility. And prohibition certainly put a lot of established liquor companies out of business. Though that doesn't address the question of why the sudden rise to prominence of brands from 1950 onwards -- 17 years after repeal.

The repeal took place during the Depression, and then there was World War II. That's not going to help market expansion. Plus, national brands used to be harder to establish. In the early 1900s, transportation costs were much higher. While there were national brands, glass bottles and water are heavy. Plus, bottles used to be reused. See http://refillables.grrn.org/content/americas-experience-refi... :

> As soon as packaged beer became popular in the mid-1930s, cans competed with refillable glass bottles for the market. The figure and table show how the rise of metal cans and a fluctuating but significant demand for one-way bottles concurred with the decline of refillable bottles. One-way containers helped national beer companies conquer the U.S. market, and their conquest further diminished the use of refillable glass bottles.

Marketing national brands also became easier with the rise of popularity of radio and TV in the 1950s. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-budweiser-became-the-king... comments:

> Budweiser had its glory days in the 1950s when Anheuser-Busch helped strengthen its national brand by sponsoring shows featuring Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, and Frank Sinatra. It also promoted its beer by sponsoring sporting events and branding stadiums. By the 1980s, Budweiser was synonymous with American culture.

Here's an essay about the decline of regional breweries in Cincinnati - http://www.wcpo.com/entertainment/local-a-e/cincinnatis-rise... . It shows that regional brands were popular pre-Prohibition, and my summary of it is that decreasing marketing and transport costs gave more weight to the economy of scale for the national brands.

http://tapsmagazine.com/in-this-issue/the-rise-of-national-b... might be useful, but non-subscribers like me only see "The 1950s witnessed the emergence of national brands, as the nation’s biggest brewers aggressively promoted their flagship beers from coast to coast."

Trendy brands are fashion items with limited product histories? Who would have guessed?

In any case, it's instructive to look at old menus and wine lists to get a feel for what was actually on offer way back when. For the most part, cocktails as we know them don't show up until the 1940s or so. Though it's worth noting there aren't a lot of speakeasy menus around.

On the other hand, generic types of liquor like "old tom gin" or "rye" date back well into the 19th century.

Wine brands certainly date back even further, and interestingly it's the champagnes that have changed very little in the top brands for centuries. Some beer brands, particularly Guinness and Bass have been popular on American menus for a long, long time.

Browse the New York Public Library's historic menu collection here- http://menus.nypl.org/

If it's not something you think much about, the history can be pretty surprising. I happen to have spent much of the past few years rummaging about in the archive closets of the Industrial Revolution -- its emergence and development. Part of that story is of development of technologies and products, some is how those came to be branded and merchandised.

It's fascinating history.

James Burke in his 1979 series Connections dates modern consumer goods to Wedgwood China in the 18th century.

The first real "personal appliances" -- consumer mechanical products -- were the bicycle and sewing machine, both emerging in the 1880s.

Edward Bernays and principles of modern PR and advertising would make another excellent topic of exploration.

All of which goes over and elucidates a tad more than snark.

But the NYPL link is appreciated.

I was looking for something on r/askhistorians I saw a while back about a hot sauce bottle found in Virginia City ruins, indicating a brand that had gone national in the 1870s or so.

Haven't found it yet, but did find this- a discussion of the saloons of the city, which mentions the Irish bar in town a few times, as well as Tennent's Ale, which was a growing global brand at the time.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/285y5g/what_e...

In any case, I spend a fair amount of time browsing 19th century American magazines and newspapers (for fun, I suppose), and you can see the early national brands growing over the decades. The railroads were what made it all possible, they really did transform daily life in substantial ways. Certainly in places that were directly connected, but also even in more remote towns. Goods moved much more quickly, and growth hacking of all sorts was rewarded quite handsomely.

EDIT- here's the thread I was looking for, it was specifically the Tabasco brand we know today. There's also a subthread on cocktails of the era! http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29tus4/compar...

Interesting that branded bourbon is an outlier, having some well established brands by the end of the 1800s (Forester, Weller, Grandad, Crow, etc)

I don't think your comment on whiskey fits in with your thesis. Whiskey is the answer to "what should we do with all of this left over grain?" throughout the Western world.

Whiskey production in the US exploded following expansion over the Cumberland Gap past Appalachia. See, e.g., http://www.whisky.de/archiv/beginner/bourbon_hist.htm

The routes were overland (rivers have a hard time crossing mountains), this was pre-railroad (let alone highway). There was significant grain production, that couldn't be moved feasibly by other means.

I was specifically addressing the case within the U.S., not the rest of the world, though yes, you're generally correct. Fermenting (and sometimes distilling) grains, fruit, potatoes, etc., is a way of storing surplus production in a form that's resistant to rot or other decay.

I still don't see what that has to do with what I see as your thesis: Your "sophisticated drinks" are an ad-man's creation.

I pointed out US whiskey because the circumstances of its existence were not manipulated by marketers, but was the "natural" consequence of the limitations of the time. Further, that fits in with whiskey throughout the Western world, so the US is not unusual.

To expand on this, distillation also solves the logistical problem of "how do we transport fruit (e.g. apples) hundreds of miles without the use of trucks, refrigeration, or pesticides?". Answer: we turn it into applejack!

It's interesting to me that "freeze distillation" is a cromulent term. I guess the analogy isn't that horrible.