Bloody Mary — In the Same Advertisement, the Headline Was Certain and the Man Was Not

Beneath a headline that declared "I invented it," his own words read "I think I invented it." Twenty years later, the hesitation was gone.

1. Two Stories People Tell

Two men are named as the creator of the Bloody Mary.

One is Fernand Petiot. A French bartender born in 1900, he joined a bar in Paris at sixteen and later moved to a hotel in New York. He claimed to have made the earliest version of this drink at the Paris bar in the early 1920s.

The other is George Jessel. An actor and comedian. He claimed that in 1927, at a bar in Palm Beach, Florida, he was the first to combine vodka, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce.

Neither claim has been matched to any contemporary record. The standard reference works on spirits history say so plainly.

So far, this is the same shape as the origin stories we have looked at before. But with these two men, there is a second chapter.

2. The Headline Was Certain, the Man Was Not

In the spring of 1956, a full-page advertisement for a vodka brand ran in an American magazine. Jessel appears in it. He was fifty-seven at the time.

The headline was set large, and it read:

I, GEORGE JESSEL, INVENTED THE BLOODY MARY

That is a declaration. But read the copy printed beneath it, and the tone changes:

I think I invented the Bloody Mary, Red-Snapper, Tomato Pick-up, or Morning Glory.

On the same page, the headline states it outright while the man’s own words say “I think.” And note that the headline names one drink; his own sentence names four. The copy goes on to add that even if he was not the first, he was the happiest.

The headline was probably not written by him. It was written by the side placing the advertisement. So who was it that declared it? That question is not answered anywhere on the page.

3. Twenty Years Later, the Hesitation Was Gone

In 1975, at seventy-six, Jessel published his autobiography.

The birth of the Bloody Mary as told there is no longer a “think.” At a bar in Palm Beach, Florida, a woman standing nearby spilled her glass down a white dress and said, “Now you can call me Bloody Mary.” A place, a person, a line of dialogue — a fully formed origin story.

Between the “I think” of 1956 and the certainty of 1975, there is a gap of almost twenty years.

There is a record on Petiot’s side too. In a magazine interview in 1964, he described finishing the drink at the hotel in New York by adding salt and lemon. In a newspaper interview in 1972, he gave an account of the name: a bar that a customer from Chicago had told him about, and the name of a woman who worked there.

And here is the curious part. When Petiot died in 1975, an obituary in one newspaper said that the person who named the drink was neither of these two men, but another regular at the bar. A third name enters the story there for the first time.

Other explanations of the name exist. The best known traces it to Mary I, the sixteenth-century queen of England. But there is no contemporary record supporting that reading at all. It is generally treated as an interpretation applied after the fact.

4. The Owner Did Not Write It Down

The Paris bar where Petiot worked has a name. Harry MacElhone bought it in 1923 and put his own name on it. That Petiot worked there is something several sources agree on.

MacElhone wrote a number of cocktail books. One of them was published in 1927.

The Bloody Mary is not in it. Neither is any cocktail made with tomato juice.

If this drink had been created at his bar in the early 1920s and served as one of its signatures, it is a little strange that the owner would not give it a single line in his own book five years later.

Other cocktail books from the same period carry no entry either. On the strength of that absence, some specialists conclude that the drink began not in Paris but in New York.

5. Two Bottles for the Spirit and the Tomato

The Bloody Mary is built around a spirit and a tomato. We placed one bottle into each of those two roles.

For the spirit, we chose a vodka made by Distillerie Combier, in the Loire valley of France. The distillery has been running since 1834, and the raw material here is unusual: wheat grown on a small plot inside the park of the Palace of Versailles. The harvest is said to come to only a few hundred kilograms a year. The bottle is called “MARIE ANTOINETTE” — the origin of the grain became the name.

For the tomato, we chose a bottle from Umenoyado Brewery in Nara. This is not tomato juice; it is an alcoholic drink made from tomato. The base combines sake and spirits, with tomato added to it. No flavourings, colourings or stabilisers are used. The tomatoes come from Portugal.

There is something we should state precisely here. Neither producer recommends these bottles for a Bloody Mary. The vodka’s official page names a different cocktail altogether; the tomato drink’s official guidance points toward entirely different uses, unrelated to this drink. Placing them in this drink is our editorial judgement.

6. And a Third Role: Umami

The Bloody Mary is sometimes called the most complicated cocktail in the world, because alongside the spirit and the tomato it takes on a whole series of other elements. Salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish — every bar builds it differently.

Into that part, we place a third bottle. A white rum made from Okinawan brown sugar, with its aroma drawn from katsuobushi — dried, fermented and smoked bonito. It is called “Smoky Umami Rum.” The katsuobushi comes through a collaboration with the fishery cooperative in Motobu.

Carrying bonito aroma into rum is an unusual idea. What this bottle brings is neither sweetness nor acidity, but aroma in the direction of dashi.

Again, to be precise: the producer does not recommend this bottle for a Bloody Mary either. Its official guidance points toward entirely different uses, not this drink. Placing it here as a third bottle is our editorial judgement.

One note: this producer also makes another bottle using brown sugar. It is a different strength, on a different base — an entirely separate product.

7. Points to Consider Behind the Counter

This is as far as we can take it. The design from here belongs to whoever is standing behind the counter.

※ What follows is a set of considerations for professional bartenders. It is not guidance for mixing at home.

① The tomato is not a “juice.”

A conventional Bloody Mary uses tomato juice. What we placed here is an alcoholic tomato drink, with its own strength. The thing occupying the tomato role is simultaneously alcohol — how to read that structure is where the design begins. That is not ours to decide.

② Layer all three, or choose among them.

We are not assuming all three bottles will be used. Build with the spirit and the tomato alone, or add the dashi direction on top? And if it is added, at what level does the outline of the whole thing change? We leave it as a question worth working through.

③ Salt, pepper, sauces.

BG does not carry the seasonings that make up a Bloody Mary. This section assumes you will use what is already on your counter.

④ We have not given quantities.

The balance between the three bottles, and the amount of seasoning, will largely determine how this drink turns out. The specific quantities belong to each bar’s own design, and we have not set them down here.

How to Begin the First Build

※ This section continues the professional-only framing above. It is a set of considerations for professional bartenders, not guidance for mixing at home.

Build with just the spirit and the tomato first, and establish a baseline from there?

Or test in a small amount what the dashi direction actually does, before anything else?

Or leave your usual seasoning structure untouched, swap only the alcohol side, and measure the difference?

All of these are right. The moment you choose that first move, it has already become your counter’s version.

8. Perhaps It Never Belonged to Any One Person

Back to the question we opened with.

Two men each said they had created it. Neither is supported by a contemporary record, and an obituary adds a third name on top.

But there may be no need to assume anyone was lying.

There is something odd in the record too. In 1939, a method appeared in print first. The name “Bloody Mary” appears in print after that, toward the close of that same year. The name did not come first with a recipe attached; an unnamed drink came first, and the name arrived afterwards.

There is also a note that among the early recipes said to lie behind this drink, some used gin rather than vodka. In America at the time, vodka was still an unfamiliar thing.

Rather than one person finishing it, it passed through many hands and arrived at its present shape gradually. Seen that way, it is natural that several people would step forward, and natural that their accounts would not line up. Each may have been describing, honestly, the part he happened to touch.

And the “I think” he put on the page in 1956 may have been the most accurate way of saying it after all.

9. What We Have Not Answered

This article has covered the gap between a declaration and a hesitation, the order in which the records survive, and the editorial judgement behind three roles.

How to combine the three bottles, what to do about seasoning, whether to use all three at all — we have set out the considerations and decided none of it.

Next time is the final instalment. The most familiar drink of all, born out of the history of medicine: the Gin & Tonic.

We will take that up next.