Punch factors
The jury remains mostly out on whether Punch – which in one form or another has been around for hundreds of years – is a cocktail in its own right, or just a fruity beverage (with or without an alcohol component). The following, however, should be taken into consideration. Certainly, Punch conforms to the “mixed drink” definition of a cocktail. The drink takes its name from the Hindi Sanskrit word for five, denoting the number of ingredients of which it was originally composed – i.e. tea, sugar, lemon, water, and arrack, an alcoholic spirit, popular in India from where it emerged in the late 1700s. It was brought to England by the British East India Company (1600–1874) and enjoyed instant popularity across every social stratum of the country. While lavish punch parties – adorned with punch bowls, ladles and fancy cups – were staged by aristocrats from London to the Shires, elsewhere, punch houses and taverns proliferated to ensure the common man’s punch requirements were met. There’s little doubt the drink’s instant vogue was every bit as meteoric as the rise of cocktails’ golden-age fame – loosely 1810s to 1910s. However, it’s worth noting that acclaimed English cook, Elizabeth Hammond, wrote in her 1916 publication, Modern Domestic Cookery and Useful Receipt Book that the cocktail recipes featured within were “technically punches, after the British drink.” The operative word here though is “technically,” for while punch meets the literal definition of a cocktail, it falls short of meeting the scope of its diversity. Yes, punch was a cultural phenomenon for a brief moment and gained wide appeal. But mostly it was sustained by Brits in India and back home, not right across the world from the Caribbean to Singapore as was the case with the true cocktail culture. By the same token, Sangria (a Spanish concoction of red wine and fruit with the option of additional spirits) and its Latin American cousin, Clericó, while icons in terms of Spain’s and Uruguay’s drinks traditions, have only minor claims to the universal cocktail culture.
