DOTD For Thursday, February 19, 2026

This Drink Will Stick With Ya, For Swizzle

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Queen’s Park Swizzle (available as both a cocktail AND a mocktail), inspired by the anniversary of U.S. Patent 1,991,871, also known as the swizzle stick patent.

Before electric mixers, how did folks mix liquid ingredients? In the 17th, 18th, and into the 19th centuries, they used a process called swizzling, which involves holding the handle of a utensil between your palms and spinning it back and forth as you move the business end of the utensil up and down in the ingredients.

Both food and drink recipes called for swizzling. One drink was even named after the process: The swizzle is “six parts of water to one of rum and an aromatic flavouring.”

This drink was taken to the Caribbean by the British in the 1800’s. Once there, the locals used twigs pulled from the Quararibea turbinata tree to swizzle the drink. These twigs were particularly appropriate for the task, because the ends are tiny spokes. When used for swizzling, they work almost like tiny immersion blenders.

These twigs were, quite literally, swizzle sticks.

In the early 1900’s, swizzle sticks made their way to Britain, where the Queen and others would use them in champagne to decrease the carbonation. (Can’t be displaying royal burping, after all.)

In the U.S., drink stirrers were made from glass, and the newly-invented Bakelite plastic. The upper crust carried their own swizzle sticks with them, usually made of silver or gold.

But then World War One came along, and temperance activists successfully made multiple arguments for prohibition. These included arguments like ‘the grains used for making alcohol could be used to feed the troops,’ and ‘everyone needs to be sober for the war crisis‘ as well as ‘the evil Germans are renowned for their alcoholic beverages so we don’t want to be like them.’ Somehow, these dumb arguments worked. So war measures to restrict alcohol were enacted, from complete prohibition in Russia, the U.S., and most of Canada, to restrictions by Great Britain, and across the European continent.

When prohibition was lifted and alcoholic beverages flowed once again, American inventor Jay Sindler realized that ne needed a way to remove the olive from his martini. And that’s when he realized that if he could use such a device, so could all the bars that were starting to reestablish themselves after Prohibition.

In 1933, Sindler invented a plastic stick with a pointed end that bartenders could use to stir drinks, and customers could use to poke olives. Or, depending on the drink, the pointy end could be changed to a spoon, or a paddle, or whatever was appropriate. In addition, they could be printed on, so customers taking their swizzle sticks home would see the name of the bar they came from every time they were used. He formed a company Spir-lt, Inc. (now known as Spirit Foodservice), and was granted a patent on Feb. 19, 1935 for swizzle sticks - and then he went into business.

Sindler’s swizzle sticks were a huge success. Eventually, plastic swizzle sticks were made in a huge variety of colors and styles. Bars in Florida, for example, would use swizzle sticks in the shape of palm trees. Golf course bars would use swizzle sticks in the shape of golf flags or golf clubs. As manufacturing techniques improved – largely thanks to progress in injection molding that came from military technology learned during WWII and the space race – swizzle sticks started being made in thousands of different designs.

But culture, as it invariably does, changed. The 1980s saw the rise of a new health-conscious lifestyle, cocktail consumption plummeted, and swizzle sticks almost disappeared - until the late 1990s.

Fueled in part by TV shows like Sex and the City and later Mad Men, martinis and cocktails made a resurgence that continues to this day. And with the cocktails came new swizzle sticks.

These days, you can buy swizzle sticks made of plastic, glass, wood, metal, sugar, and more, in all types of designs. You can also find vintage swizzle sticks on Ebay and other websites.

If you’re really interested in swizzle sticks, you might want to visit The Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, join the International Swizzle Stick Collectors Association, or perhaps just view all of the results that come back when you perform a Google Image search for “swizzle sticks”. You might be amazed to discover all that has developed from the twigs of the Quararibea turbinata tree, which has also become known as the swizzle stick tree.

With swizzle sticks in mind, it’s time we mixed up today’s Drink Of The Day, a Queen’s Park Swizzle.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: