Bloody Mary

“One Bloody Mary, please!!!” you could hear or order for instance in a pub but… have you stopped to think what you have ordered?! A person, and the worst… bloody :S
Okay, now it can seem to be that it’s not shocking because it’s said in English language and it could go unnoticed but if you translate it to Spanish…: “Una de María la Sanguinaria/Sangrienta, por favor” This is not the same, isn’t it??

Well, in this post I want to show you why this drink is called so.
All starts when Tudors family reigned. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was the successor queen.

Mary I just reigned for 5 years (1553-1558) but it was time enough in order to she came by the nickname “Bloody Mary”. But why this horrible nickname? It's simple, because she tried to re-establish Catholicism as the religion of the land by killing people who weren’t Catholics or didn’t want to convert themselves to the Catholicism.


Well, right now, we already know the story about the Mary's nickname but the question is: Why is a cocktail called of this way?!
It's said that this cocktail born in 1920, in a local pub from Paris called "Harry's New York Bar", a hangout for Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates.

One night one of the barmen, Ferdinand Petoit, mixed for a cocktail, vodka with lemon juice, tabasco sauce and Worcestershire or Worcester sauce (It is a fermented liquid condiment and it's used to flavour meat or fish dishes.).
Then, he added tomato juice and salt and pepper. The mixture was so explosive that local customers named it "Bloody Mary" like queen's nickname.

By: Nuria María Ortiz Sánchez