It might seem strange that one of the most popular drinks enjoyed across many countries today is at its core unchanged from its 19th-century origins. The whisky highball is a simple concept: mix together one part whisky to two parts soda water in a glass filled with ice. It’s easy to drink, cool, and refreshing.
Various people throughout history – including whisky magnate Tommy Dewar – have claimed the invention of this libation, which became wildly popular with famous stage actors and subsequently the general public in the early 1900s. Online cocktails, spirits and liqueurs resource Difford’s Guide credits the first written record of the drink to an 1894 play, My Friend From India, when a character calls for a “high ball of whiskey”. The first recorded written recipe emerges in 1895, when bartender and author of The Mixicologist Chris Lawlor calls for using brandy or whiskey (another recipe from this book that is pretty much a whisky highball has the fabulous name The Splificator).
As for the name, drinks historian Gary
