Properly Sauced: The Twelve Mile Limit

By Anthony Todd in Food on Oct 4, 2011 4:30PM

Classic cocktail names were often created to evoke a very specific place and time. Most of those times and places have been forgotten, and what remains are just ... odd names. See: The Monkey Gland, The Scofflaw, and today's entry, The Twelve Mile Limit. Referring to the offshore limit of the jurisdiction of the federal government, the Twelve Mile Limit echoed the Three Mile Limit, an earlier version of the drink commemorating a less expansive federal reach.

Tonight is the last installment of Prohibition, the new documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. We've been watching intently (even though we saw a preview screening), and tonight's episode, "A Nation of Hypocrites," is the most dramatic yet. It's also the episode that all the amateur Chicago gangster historians have been waiting for - when the wheels came off the prohibition wagon. Gangsters, massacres, federal manhunts and speakeasies; tonight is the episode that will resonate with what most people have heard about Prohibition before. The name of today's cocktail is oddly appropriate for the episode; an example of the level of awareness of federal law amongst ordinary drinkers and their willingness to flaunt their disobedience.

Luckily, as you'll learn in the episode, the failed experiment in controlling America's sinning ended. So, you can drink as many of these cocktails as you want. However, one should probably be enough.

The Twelve Mile Limit

From Ted Haigh, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails



1 oz white rum

1/2 oz rye whiskey

1/2 oz brandy

1/2 oz grenadine

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

Prohibition airs tonight at 8 p.m. on WTTW.

