Betwixted and Be Twained: The Scotch Sour

It is a curious thing that so many of our greatest literary men have found inspiration at the bottom of a glass. Hemingway had his drinks, Fitzgerald had his, Poe had his, and Twain—being unwilling to let any other man have the last word—eventually acquired a cocktail of his own.

This is only fair. A man who spent his youth in Nevada, where water was sometimes harder to locate than gold, was bound to develop an opinion about whiskey.

Samuel Clemens arrived in the Nevada Territory in 1861, aged 25, to prospect for riches with the customary result: he found none. He did, however, find journalism.

At the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, he discovered that words could sometimes pay better than digging holes, and in 1863 he began signing his work “Mark Twain.” Thus Nevada received its literary legend, while the mining camps received another man who could tell a story longer than a claim could produce gold.

Twain had sensible opinions about beverages.

“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” he observed, a philosophy particularly well suited to the Great American Desert. He also had a theory about Scotch and toothache.

After encountering a Scotch cocktail during an 1874 voyage to London, he reportedly wrote to his wife asking that the necessary ingredients be kept ready for his return. He claimed to take Scotch as a preventive against toothache and added, with admirable confidence, that he had never suffered one and did not intend to begin.

Virginia City, meanwhile, has never been shy about claiming Twain as one of its own. He spent his early Nevada years among prospectors, newspaper reporters and saloons, and the town's old buildings still preserve reminders of the young Clemens who arrived looking for fortune and departed with a career.

And if attending Virginia City festivities seems too strenuous, there is always the literary alternative: make yourself a Mark Twain cocktail and contemplate civilization from the comfort of your own chair. The recipe is mercifully simple.

Put 1½ ounces of blended Scotch, ¾ ounce of fresh lemon juice, ½ to 1 ounce of simple syrup, and two dashes of Angostura bitters into a shaker with ice. Shake until thoroughly chilled, strain into a chilled coupe or whiskey glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

There you have it: the beverage of a Nevada newspaperman who went looking for gold and found immortality instead. Twain once had plenty to say about whiskey, water, and human foolishness.

A century and a half later, the whiskey remains, the water is still being argued over, and Mark Twain is still getting the last word.

The Fourth Annual Mark Twain Days Literary Festival will be held Oct. 13-17, 2026, with events in Carson City and Virginia City. Author talks, picon punch off, family activities, and live entertainment! Visit breweryarts.org/marktwaindays for details.