photo: Johnny Autry
Punch has always been eager to start the party early. Bowls brimming with the refreshment began to grace hallway tables in the colonies in the late 1600s. But its popularity blossomed in the next century, when imbibers mixed rum or whiskey or brandy or all three with citrus and sugar. Particularly ubiquitous in ports where these provisions were easy to gather, punch was favored by classes both upper and lower.
With the advent of the cocktail, however, the libation fell from favor, either retreating to rarefied enclaves such as society balls or weakening into sherbet-dolloped versions suitable for church picnics. Only in more recent years have bartenders rediscovered the pleasures of the bowl, and today it’s not uncommon to spot an iced punch prominently displayed on a craft-cocktail bar. It was no surprise, then, that when