Barroom Historian. Editor in Chief, Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails. Wrote Imbibe + Punch. Resident Historian, https://t.co/gTTy8ikqBd. Brooklynite.
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In keeping with this evening’s theme of traumatized optimism, Today’s Toast is a lovely, soft and pleasant one—a fuzzy kitten of a drink: Harry Johnson’s Blackthorn, from 1900 or a little before. But let’s see to those hands, though. 
Today’s Toast: Wine and Bitters, just like George Washington served Sir Guy Carleton back in 1783, when he was negotiating how to get the damn Brits outta NYC, what with them having lost the war the hard way. But first—you may recall the drill—wash your hands. 
Having worked our way through more drinks than any normal person needs to know, from the Tasmanian Blow My Skull to the kümmel-Vodka-and-Tabasco Epsom, let’s make Today’s Toast the elegant original version of the Negroni, as printed in 1947. Dunque, lavatevi i mani! 
For Today’s Toast, I figured on freestyling a little aperitif in the key of rum, perhaps with a fortified wine supplying the harmony. Since that reads “sailors” to me, let’s christen ‘er the Brigantine, a sort of ship once crewed by men whose hands were a lot dirtier than yours. 
Today’s Toast is a turn-of-the-last-century fave from the windward reaches of the British West Indies, the Green Swizzle. Whether the Ice House in Bridgetown or the Queen’s Park Hotel in Port of Spain made the better one was an open question. Hand sanitation, not so much. 
Today being World Cocktail Day, I should prolly inflict the original Cock-Tail on yinz. Two fingers of American genever, a lump of sugar, a big splash of water, a little one of Stoughton’s bitters, and—nah. What say we have a lil’ Weeski instead? Washercize them digits first, tho 
Today’s Toast is from Jim Grey, Head bartender st NYC’s tony Fifth-Avenue Hotel from the 1880s until it closed in 1908. He called it an Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail; others called it a Toddy. But he was the man, and they weren’t. It’s simple as breathing if your hands are clean 
Today’s Toast: the fabulous Jungle Bird, invented in 1973 at the Aviary Bar in the new Kuala Lumpur Hilton by (as @k_choong recently discovered) head bartender Ong Swee Teik, alias Jeffrey Ong. So let’s conduct the mandated ablution ritual and get to mixing! 
Today’s Toast: the Singapore Sling—but the old way, from before the Raffles found its “lost” recipe and turned it into a Disco Drink. There were as many ways to make this thing as there were bartenders and clubmen in the old Empire, but ours takes a keen mind and clean hands. 
Today’s Toast is yet another avatar of the mighty Martini: in this case, the original, 1880s wet version that some call the Martinez (that was actually just one of the Martini’s grade-school nicknames, as it were, and never a drink in its own right). So soap ‘em up & dry ‘em off. 
Today’s Toast, the Jack Rose, was a Wall-St fave back around 1900, a specialty of “Old Frank” Haas at Fred Eberlin’s on New St., just around the corner from the NYSE. His version was a bit trickier than the one that swept the nation a few years later. Still took clean hands, tho. 
For Today’s Toast, a drink I’ve never tried, from San Francisco bartender Ernest P. Rawlings, who manned the stick at Whelan & Collins, corner of California and Montgomery, San Francisco, back in 1914: the Mary Jane Cocktail. But first, let’s irrigate ‘em. 
Today is a Martini day if ever there was. But we already did the Martini, didn’t we? Back 16 years ago in the first week of this shit? I say that was *a* Martini, but not *the* Martini, which is a mirage. So for Today’s Toast, let’s do another Martini. With clean hands, of course 
Today’s Toast? The Manhattan. Because who doesn’t need a Manhattan? It’s a little pool of ice-cold 1882 America reaching forward to say “you’ll make it through this.” So let’s dip ‘em, soap ‘em and rinse ‘em and git to mixin’. 
So far, I’ve mostly mixed standards and simple variations. So just for a change, I’m gonna get real gone, with something I call the “Java Sì,” a little Italo-Indonesian number. But first, of course, let’s do the necessary. 
First off, though, let’s dredge our hands in water and coat them thoroughly with soap. 
It’s a whiskey drink, of course. Rye or bourbon. But if all you got is Irish, fine. And if it’s brandy or Pisco or whatever, go for it. 
Start with gin. But what we drank as gin in 1876: genever. If you’ve got some, any will do. 