A Recipe for a Cocktail from the Al Capone Era, Courtesy a Vintage Bar in Chicago

Chicago Stories: Al Capone's Bloody Business premieres Friday, November 1 at 8:00 pm and is available to stream at the same time at wttw.com/chicagostories or the PBS app.
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When the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect on January 16, 1920 and forbade the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol in the United States, it created a lucrative new underground business: bootlegging. The money available in getting alcohol to people in the States enticed various organized crime groups to get into the business, whether they had existed before Prohibition or not.

The most famous of these gangsters was Al Capone, who became Johnny Torrio's right-hand man as he established himself as a bootlegger on the South Side of Chicago, not only providing alcohol to Chicagoans but also making and shipping some across the country from the railroad hub of Chicago. Capone eventually took over Torrio's gang, in 1925.

Two years later, while Capone was at the height of his notoriety, Harry MacElhone published Barflies and Cocktails. MacElhone was a legendary bartender at a time when cocktails were becoming more popular – in part because wine and beer had become more difficult to find during Prohibition, and some of the rough alcohols available needed mixers to be palatable. 

Bartending "has developed into a profession requiring the highest order of scientific skill to ensure success," MacElhone writes in the introduction to Barflies and Cocktails. Most famous for his Harry's New York Bar in Paris, he also worked in London and New York City, and has been credited with inventing or first publishing such classic cocktails as the White Lady, Bloody Mary, Sidecar, and Boulevardier. 

"The successful barman of to-day is alert, bright, cheerful, courteous, speaks when spoken to, or only so far as a query concerning the drink, is clean and neat in dress and makes no unnecessary display of jewelry," he writes. It's likely such a bartender could be found at the Chicago Athletic Association on Michigan Avenue, maybe even serving drinks from MacElhone's books. 

The elite private club building of the Chicago Athletic Association is now a hotel that includes Milk Room, an eight-seat bar dedicated in large part to the drinks of the past – sometimes literally, as in its collection of rare vintage liquors. Milk Room "once served as the watering hole for the members of the club during Prohibition, where they drank goblets of 'milk,' as was the saying," says manager Sam Parrie. 

Parrie has adapted a cocktail called the Attack from MacElhone's Barflies and Cocktails for Milk Room and shared the recipe with us as an updated relic of the Prohibition era when Capone and his gang had immense power in the city. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine Capone drinking a cocktail in the shadowy privacy of what is now Milk Room.

Attack 1927

From Barflies and Cocktails by Harry MacElhone, "recipe from Johnny's Bar, Rue Port Mahon, Paris."
Adapted by Sam Parrie, manager of Chicago's Milk Room

A brooding sipper brought together with brandy and fortified wine. A very classic Milk Room build that uses a bold Tenareze Armagnac and a higher proof calvados. We love cocktails that force the imbiber to sit and contemplate their beverage as the tasting notes unfold and release in the glass. 

Ingredients

1 ounce Calvados 
1 ounce Armagnac 
1/2 ounce Amontillado Sherry 
1 barspoon Pedro Ximenez Sherry 
1 barspoon Amaro 
1 barspoon Gum Arabic Syrup 
1 dash Absinthe 
2 dash Angostura bitters

DIrections

Stir lightly. Strain. Serve up with a lemon twist.