Bogart`s Bitters can arguably be said to have started the cocktail movement as it was the first-ever mentioned bitters in the very first cocktail book published in 1862, written by the most famous bartender of those days, Jerry Thomas – a name synonymous with the first golden age of the cocktail.
Although no bottles of the Jerry Thomas era ever surfaced, the common belief is that Bogart’s was a kind of misspelling of Boker’s Bitters at that time. Still, the impact on the development of the cocktail is without question. Before other bitters appeared in cocktail recipes around the world, there was Bogart’s/Boker’s. A beautifully balanced and versatile cocktail bitter, it was even called for by name in the first Martini Cocktail recipe, printed in 1888, where one was instructed to use “genuine” Bogart’s/Boker’s, indicating that this most popular bitters had weak imitations floating around… (continued below)