“Great balls of fire!”
If that was your reaction the first time you swallowed a shot of rough brandy, you are not alone. Early in the 19th century, the phrase “a ball of fire” referred to a glass of cheap, fiery brandy. The Irish called a glass of whiskey “a ball of malt.” In fact, the tasting room at the Jameson whiskey headquarters in Dublin is called “The Ball of Malt.” As playwright Sean O’Casey put it, “There’s nothing like a ball o’ malt occasional like.”
When the phrase crossed the Atlantic, it became “a ball of whiskey.” Though often fiery, the ball was not necessarily Irish. By the late nineteenth century, a bartender had only to hear the word “ball,” and he knew his customer wanted a glass of whiskey.
If that customer wanted seltzer or plain water added to his whiskey to make a longer drink, he asked for a “high ball.” That’s what they say in St. Louis where, the story goes, the name was born. It seems the local seltzer was popular, and when a customer asked for seltzer with his ball, the barman used a taller glass. The drink became known as a high ball. (I don’t know why they didn’t call it a “tall ball.”) High ball started out as two separate words. Today, they’re joined.
Not everyone agrees with the St. Louis tale. Some say the drink got its name from a railway signal. A ball raised on a pole indicated that the train was running late and the engineer needed to speed up. According to this theory, the drink was so named because it could be made in a hurry. Actually, a simple shot of whiskey would have been quicker.
Another theory is that the highball was named after balls of ice in the drink. But I don’t believe bartenders were freezing ice into balls at the turn of the 20th century.
In the early years of the century, the highball was as prominent in song and story as in barrooms. Everyone from Dorothy Parker to F. Scott Fitzgerald poured highballs for their characters. When Julian English, the hero of John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra, met his downfall, he used a vase to make himself “the biggest highball he had ever seen.”
The word began to fade as the name of a drink as people began ordering drinks by their ingredients, as in “a scotch and soda,” or “rye and ginger,” or “whiskey and seltzer.” As they became more brand-conscious, they ordered a “Dewars and soda,” or “Canadian Club and ginger,” rather than a plain old highball.
Today, for the most part, a highball is a tall glass, not a specific drink. Even in St. Louis, the ball is over.
Highball
Another class of mixed drinks, and one which is now very common, is known as highball. The highball in its simplest conception is not a mixed drink at all, except in the mixing of water with the alcoholic beverage. The highball is served in a tall glass, the whiskey, brandy or gin being first poured into the glass with, usually, a lump of ice, and the glass is then filled with soda water or seltzer or some carbonated beverage. – Beverages and Their Adulteration: Origin, Composition, Manufacture, Natural, Artificial, Fermented, Distilled, Alkaloidal and Fruit Juices, Harvey Washington Wiley, 1919.
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