Kentucky Mule

The Kentucky Mule is here to challenge the Moscow Mule’s czardom.

What’s not to love about a refreshing mule? The mule cocktail category as we know it today focuses on spirits, lime, and ginger beer. There are about a million different types of mules, but the Moscow Mule is the czar of them all. 

The Moscow Mule is an incredibly popular cocktail that combines vodka, ginger beer, and lime all together in its signature copper mug. You can clink together those frosty vodka-filled mugs and basically picture Russia, da? The only problem – the Moscow Mule isn’t Russian at all. It’s actually not even a mule. 

Back in 1941, just about everyone was in need of a drink. It was the middle of WWII and the United States and the Soviet Union had just become allies. And how did the United States celebrate? With a good ol’ show of capitalism. The original Moscow Mule was actually cooked up between an LA bar owner and a Smirnoff executive. The bar owner was looking to drum up business and offload as much ginger beer as possible. The Smirnoff exec was just trying to sell vodka. By trial and error they invented the cocktail that had a bite like a mule kick and vodka just like they drank in Moscow. That’s right – the “mule” category isn’t even real, it’s just a misnomer for the “buck” category of cocktails like the Kentucky Buck. Oh and the copper mug? All part of the marketing campaign. 

And well, it worked. The Hollywood elite couldn’t get enough and soon neither could the American public. The Moscow Mule faded out of popularity during the Cold War, but Americans were hooked on vodka. Even with all of the anti-Soviet sentiment, vodka stayed one of the top selling liquors in the 1950s and 60s. 

Okay okay. So what does all of this have to do with bourbon? Well in the 1940s, Americans weren’t so much looking for a new type of liquor like vodka, they were just looking for any liquor. As Americans entered WWII, the government took control of most of the distilleries to produce industrial strength alcohol for anything from antifreeze to penicillin. Even after the war was over, President Truman shut down the distilleries and sent the grain reserves as relief to war-torn Europe. In other words, whiskey and bourbon were impossible to find. And so vodka rained supreme until bourbon’s comeback in the 1960s. 

Today the Moscow Mule is very much back in fashion, along with all of its variations. Our personal favorite, the Kentucky Mule, swaps in bourbon for the all-American spin on this not-so Russian classic.