Hot Toddy

For cold winter nights, look no further than the Hot Toddy.

These days, the Hot Toddy is thought of as a quintessential, Western method for raising your spirits with a few spirits in the winter. It’s a piping hot concoction of boiling water, honey, lemon juice, spices, and bourbon whiskey of course. For those of you who prefer Scotch whiskey, don’t worry because the Whisky Skin has you covered. If rye whiskey is more your thing, then the Ward 8 Toddy will be right up your alley. So with Whisky Skins appearing in Scotland, the Ward 8 Toddy coming straight from Boston, and the Hot Toddy originally gaining traction in the U.K., it’s easy to assume the Toddy in general is a Western creation. But the credit actually goes to India.

The word “toddy” is derived from the Hindi word “tādi,” which was first recorded around 1610. The word referred to a beverage that came from fermented palm sap, but evolved by 1786 to include alcohol beverages that were made with water, spices, and sugar. Throughout the Indian subcontinent, the drink was sold by street vendors and enjoyed in homes for centuries. So how did it become mislabeled as a Western way to wet your whistle? Two little things known as: The East India Trading Company and the British Raj.

The British Raj was the formal colonization of India by the British crown from the mid-1800s to 1947. But long before Queen Victoria decided to claim a whole country of people for herself, the East India Trading Company had been trying to do the same. At the time, the British East India Trading Company was the largest company in the world and established trade posts on the Indian subcontinent as early as 1608. The EIC squatted on the land for the next 250 years, slowly seizing land, power, and appropriating the culture. The Tādi was no exception.

The renamed Toddy was exported back to the U.K. where it became a huge hit with pub goers trying to survive the damp and bitter winters of Britain, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. A rival story does credit the Hot Toddy origins to an Irish doctor named Robert Bentley Todd in the mid-1800s. The doctor allegedly prescribed his patients with a brandy, water, cinnamon, and sugar beverage for colds (linking the drink as a cure for the common cold). However, the tādi predates Dr. Todd by a few centuries and is a much simpler version than the cocktail we enjoy today.

So even though the Hot Toddy hails from India, it’s a drink we’re thankful to enjoy on cold winter nights from anywhere in the world.