A flask of America's oldest cocktail - Fish House Punch

Fish House Punch has been called a "secret of the oldest dining club in the world" that "never has been revealed" (New York Times), and one of the most carefully kept beverage-recipe secrets in the world (WSJ).

Originally brewed in the 1730s by a slew of Philadelphia gentlemen as a liquid fortification served up at their private riverside fishing club known as the State in Schuylkill - or "The Fish House" - Fish House Punch has warmed the cockles of club members' hearts for centuries.  Presidents and statesmen have leapt at the chance to visit the Fish House and quaff the secret concoction. One legend has it that Washington himself partook liberally of the punch at a Fish House dinner he attended while in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention.

Not too long ago, Christian D'Andrea '94 inadvertently discovered the recipe in a rare books archive.  It was embedded in a holiday memo written by a well-known American personage from the twentieth century.  As the author of the memo put it, a relative of his had "liberated the recipe for the famous punch" from the Fish House.  It turns out this note is the first - and only - instance of the recipe being spirited away, in written form, from within the confines of the fabled Philadelphia compound.

Dubbed "one of the world’s most powerful concoctions" (Vintage Cocktails), Fish House Punch is credited with an array of salutary benefits - not the least of which is the famed vigor and longevity of those who consume it.  One observer, writing about the State in Schuylkill in 1905, wrote that "the belief has always existed... that there is something in the atmosphere of the club conducive to long life."  D'Andrea suspects that this "something" is in fact the punch.  He notes that Robert Wharton, the club's third governor, enlisted as a private in the War of 1812...at the age of 57.

Responding to the surprising amount of interest generated by all of this, D'Andrea now shares the punch at lectures and tastings, and also sometimes in custom flasks, which he makes in micro-batches.

FishHousePunch.com