If You Want The Strongest Cocktail, This Classic Beats A Long Island Iced Tea

If, for some reason, the only goal you have in ordering a cocktail one day is to get hammered, you'll have no shortage of options in the competition for world's strongest cocktail. While we certainly can't recommend ordering anything for this reason, some bartenders in the past clearly had no such scruples, because recipe books are filled with drinks that will absolutely lay you out if you have even one of them. Often the strongest cocktail recipes are built to mask the punishingly high alcohol content, like the alchemy that produces a Long Island iced tea, or the citrus juices and sweet spice syrups cooling the burn of three types of run in a Zombie. But the cocktail that has earned a reputation as the world's strongest, the Aunt Roberta, makes no such accommodations.

The Aunt Roberta is not a classic cocktail with a definitive right way to make it, so there are some lighter recipes you'll find, but most mixtures call for four or five different types of alcohol, and nothing else. The primary liquors are vodka, gin, and absinthe, with brandy, and a just a little blackberry liqueur to give your palate some relief. While the ratios can also vary based on what source you are working off of, the standard is three parts vodka to two parts absinthe, one part brandy, one part blackberry liqueur (or the black raspberry liqueur Chambord), and one or one-half parts gin. Mix them all together in a glass with ice and stir. Then wake up two days later filled with regret.

So where did the Aunt Roberta come from and why was its creator so determined to get wasted? Well like a lot of cocktails, nobody really knows. There are stories floating around online that claim it dates back to the 1800s, and that it was named for an Alabama woman named Roberta. She supposedly fled an abusive home and worked as a cotton picker before becoming a moonshiner, serving her hardcore concoction to customers who later carried it around the country. Another story claims it was named after a 20th century Prohibition bootlegger.

The reality is that both stories are probably fake, as there is no evidence of the Aunt Roberta existing at all until the last few decades, despite the fact cocktail history is actually quite well documented. It also doesn't help that a key ingredient, absinthe, was illegal in the U.S. from 1912 until 2017, although that hasn't stopped it from being an element in some older cocktails like the Sazerac.

As for whether Aunt Roberta is any good, the consensus seems to be no. It's the kind of starts with a wince and ends with a grimace. This is purely in the novelty drink territory, with the absinthe in particular drowning out any complexity you might get from mixing in the other liquors. But let's be real. You aren't drinking the Aunt Roberta to relax, or for the taste. You are drinking it because why not, and because you don't care how the rest of the evening goes.