The Whiskey Sour's history is longer than the Manhattan's and harder to pin down, because nobody invented it. The sour — spirit, citrus, sugar — was a way of drinking before it was a recipe, and the whiskey version slipped into print without ceremony sometime in the 1860s, already too familiar to need explaining. What followed was a century as America's default mixed drink, a slow decline into bottled sour mix, and a revival that rebuilt its descendants more enthusiastically than the drink itself. This is the Archive — the long version, with the legends separated from the record.

The deep-dives are above; what follows is the arc in one piece.

Before the Whiskey Sour: Punch, Grog and the Sour Family

Citrus and spirit were being mixed long before anyone called the result a cocktail. Difford's credits the British Navy with popularizing, if not inventing, the sour: rum rations cut with lime juice to combat scurvy — the origin of "limeys" — produced grog, a daiquiri-like proto-sour. David Wondrich files the Sours among "The Children of Punch," the single-serving descendants of the great communal bowl. By 1856 a "Sour" and a "Fix" were on a hand-written drinks list at Mart Ackermann's Saloon in Toronto, and in 1862 Jerry Thomas's How to Mix Drinks printed the first known written sour recipes: a Brandy Sour, a Gin Sour and a Santa Cruz (rum) Sour.

The 1862 Question, Answered

You will read in many places — PUNCH among them — that the Whiskey Sour was first printed in Jerry Thomas's 1862 book. It was not. We checked the archive.org scans: the 1862 edition's index lists Brandy Sour, Gin Sour and Santa Cruz Sour and no Whiskey Sour, and neither does the 1882 printing. The Whiskey Sour by name appears in the posthumous 1887 "Entirely New and Enlarged" edition — "the juice of half a small lemon," "1 wine-glass of Bourbon or rye whiskey," a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a little seltzer, shaken with shaved ice, strained into a claret glass and "ornament[ed] with berries." Sources that say 1862 are describing the sour template, not a Whiskey Sour by name. The earliest newspaper mention cited by Difford's and PUNCH is the Waukesha Plaindealer of 4 January 1870, where it already required no explanation. The Oxford Companion's Paul Clarke cites Whisky Sour recipes a year earlier, in Haney's 1869 Steward and Barkeeper's Manual, and places a first sighting as early as 1826, with a reappearance in 1862 that the 1862 text itself does not bear out. The evidence is weighed in who invented the Whiskey Sour.

The Iquique Legend

The most repeated origin story holds that Elliott (or Elliot) Stubb, an English ship's steward, invented the whisky sour in the port of Iquique — then Peru, now Chile — in 1872, using the local Limón de Pica. The story is in print by 1962, when a Universidad de Cuyo publication cited a report in El Comercio de Iquique, and it became a popular Chilean legend in the 1980s. Difford's notes that, although it is told as the Pisco Sour's origin, the quote attributed to Stubb was actually about the whiskey sour, the Pisco Sour's forerunner, and that the whiskey sour's origins lie earlier, in the United States — which the 1870 Wisconsin newspaper alone demonstrates. Treat it as folklore. The drink's Peruvian cousin is compared directly in Whiskey Sour vs Pisco Sour.

A Cardinal Point of American Drinking

"When American meets American then comes the whisky sour," the Atlanta Daily Constitution wrote in 1879, and Wondrich's summary of the next century is blunt: from roughly the 1860s to the 1960s the Sour, and particularly its whiskey incarnation, was one of the cardinal points of American drinking. It displaced the Brandy Sour as the most popular member of the family and thrived through Prohibition. The glass drifted with fashion — Thomas's small bar glass, the claret glass of 1887 and of Mahoney's 1912 guide, Winter's 1884 "fancy sour glass," today's rocks glass or coupe — and so did the proportions: early versions were longer and sweeter, later ones dropped the water and sharpened the lemon. The first great variation arrived in this period too. In December 1883 a Chicago bartender told the Washington Star that "men who drink our sours expect a claret at every bar"; the red-wine float went by Chicago Sour, Claret Snap and Continental Sour before the New York Sour name was in print by 1934.

Egg White, Boston and the Interwar Riffs

Egg white is a 1920s addition. Robert Vermeire wrote in 1922 that "a few drops of white of egg improves all Sours," and the Oxford Companion dates egg white in the Whisky Sour from that decade; with it, the drink is commonly called a Boston Sour, a name no reputable source has explained and for which Barry Popik's etymology entry has no dated first citation. The interwar years produced most of the sour's named riffs: Boston's Ward Eight (traditionally 1898, though Difford's doubts the date), the Scofflaw of Paris in January 1924, Craddock's Rattlesnake in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, the Brown Derby at Hollywood's Vendôme, and the Blinker in Duffy's 1934 manual.

The Sour-Mix Decline

The Whiskey Sour's undoing was convenience. Pre-packaged sour mixes date to the early 1900s — Lemos by 1911 — spread during Prohibition, were mass-marketed by Holland House in the 1940s, and by the 1970s and '80s had defined what PUNCH calls the post-Prohibition dark ages: a sugar-and-citric-acid blend where fresh lemon had been. Most commercial brands, Robert Hess writes in the Oxford Companion, "tend to be laden with chemicals and preservatives." The Margarita, the Oxford Companion notes, essentially took the Whiskey Sour's place after the 1960s. A drink that had once been a mark of American seriousness became a symbol of the soda gun.

The Revival

Fresh juice came back with Dale DeGroff at the Rainbow Room, reopened in December 1987 under Joe Baum, who said that if DeGroff saw a soda gun he'd rip it out. It became standard with the late-1990s craft movement, above all at Sasha Petraske's Milk & Honey (1999), whose house sour formula spawned a lineage: the Gold Rush around 2000–01 — Jim Meehan called it "a perfectly balanced Bourbon Sour" — and the Penicillin in 2005; Milk & Honey alum Sam Ross later made the Paper Plane (2008) for Chicago's Violet Hour. DeGroff's own Whiskey Smash, Giuseppe González's Trinidad Sour (2009) and Jeffrey Morgenthaler's Amaretto Sour (2012) belong to the same wave. The Oxford Companion's verdict is fair: the plain Whisky Sour has not been central to the 21st-century revival, but its derivatives are ubiquitous. PUNCH's two Whiskey Sour contests, in 2017 and 2024, are the modern drink in miniature — rye for presence against egg white, bitters dashed on the foam, and a judges' consensus of 2 oz whiskey to ¾ oz each of lemon and syrup, the ratio behind the house recipe.

The Whiskey Sour Today

The modern consensus spec — 2 oz whiskey, ¾ oz fresh lemon, ¾ oz simple syrup, shaken, egg white optional, served over fresh ice or up — is recognizably Thomas's 1887 drink with the seltzer gone and the lemon sharpened. Rye and bourbon remain equally legitimate, as they were in 1887; the structural case for rye is made in why rye works in a Whiskey Sour. The drink even has a day — National Whiskey Sour Day, 25 August — though no reputable source documents where the observance came from. The whole family is mapped in Whiskey Sour Variations and Whiskey Sour by Spirit; the definition in what is a Whiskey Sour.

The Whiskey Sour and the Manhattan

The two drinks share a decade and a spirit and almost nothing else. The Manhattan was born in one city in the early 1870s, built on sweet vermouth, and has a name attached to a club; the Whiskey Sour grew out of a family of drinks, was in a Wisconsin newspaper by January 1870, and belongs to nobody. One is stirred and served up, the other shaken over ice. Their parallel histories are told in the history of the Manhattan, and the two are compared directly in Whiskey Sour vs Manhattan.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was the Whiskey Sour invented?

Nobody knows exactly. The sour template is in Jerry Thomas's 1862 book (brandy, gin, rum), "whisky sour" is in print by 4 January 1870 in the Waukesha Plaindealer, and the Oxford Companion cites an 1826 mention. The Oxford Companion also cites Whisky Sour recipes in Haney's 1869 manual; the Whiskey Sour in Thomas's guide appears in the 1887 edition, published after his death.

Who invented the Whiskey Sour?

Nobody is credibly named. The Elliott Stubb story — an English steward in Iquique in 1872 — is in print by 1962 (citing El Comercio de Iquique), became popular in Chile in the 1980s and is folklore; the drink was already in American print two years earlier.

Was the original Whiskey Sour made with rye or bourbon?

Both. The 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas's guide, published after his death, specifies "1 wine-glass of Bourbon or rye whiskey." The IBA, Difford's and PUNCH default to bourbon today; PUNCH's 2017 judges preferred rye.

Did the original Whiskey Sour have egg white?

No. Thomas's recipe has none. Egg white entered the sour in the 1920s — Vermeire wrote in 1922 that it "improves all Sours" — and with it the drink is commonly called a Boston Sour.

Why did the Whiskey Sour fall out of favor?

Sour mix. Pre-packaged mixes spread from the early 1900s and defined the drink by the 1970s and '80s; the Margarita essentially took its place after the 1960s. Fresh juice returned with Dale DeGroff in 1987 and the craft bars of the late 1990s.

What are the Whiskey Sour's oldest relatives?

The New York Sour (a red-wine float, Chicago, 1883), the Ward Eight (Boston, in print by 1913), the Scofflaw (Paris, 1924), the Rattlesnake (1930) and the Blinker (1934) — all before the Second World War.

Frequently Asked Questions (Voice Search)

How old is the Whiskey Sour?

At least 155 years. It was in a Wisconsin newspaper in January 1870, already needing no explanation; the sour template is older still.

Is the Whiskey Sour older than the Manhattan?

Yes, narrowly. The Whiskey Sour was in print by 1870; the Manhattan was created in New York in the early 1870s.

What did the first Whiskey Sour taste like?

Longer and sweeter than today's — Thomas's 1887 recipe dissolves the sugar in seltzer, uses the juice of half a small lemon and serves it on shaved ice with berries.

Is the Whiskey Sour from Peru or Chile?

No. The Iquique legend is folklore; the drink was in American print by 1870. Peru's own drink is the Pisco Sour.