Portland is widely known in 2016 for its cocktail-friendly restaurants and bars. It hasn’t always been so.

Portland Mayor Neal Dow promoted a citywide ban on alcohol in 1851.

Portland Mayor Neal Dow promoted a citywide ban on alcohol in 1851.

Maine was the birthplace of Prohibition, led by Portland Mayor Neal Dow, who promoted a citywide ban on alcohol in 1851. Rum, he believed, made Mainers lazy. As Maine goes, so went the nation in 1920, and Dow became known as the “Father of Prohibition.” The country enacted a Constitutional amendment outlawing alcohol in the United States.

The law was repealed on Dec. 5, 1933.

Celebrate the end of Prohibition Sunday at the 2nd Annual Repeal Day Ball at the Mechanics Hall, 519 Congress St. There will be food, music, a photo booth – and, of course, drinks.

Tickets cost $20 and include entry, food, the photo booth and swag. Buy tickets at repealdayball.bpt.me/

Drinks cost $2 each, cash only. A portion of the proceeds benefits the Maine Chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild.

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Bramhall Pub's Hanky Panky, a gin and vermouth cocktail dating back to a 1925 London.

Bramhall Pub’s Hanky Panky, a gin and vermouth cocktail dating back to a 1925 London.

If you can’t make the party, celebrate at home with the “Hanky Panky,” a Prohibition-era cocktail served at the Bramhall Pub in Portland, which bills itself as a modern-day speakeasy.

The Hanky Panky was created in 1925 by Ada Coleman, head bartender at The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. (Surprisingly, women often worked as “barmaids” at the time, though the career choice was controversial.) She is said to have created the cocktail for a famous British actor who exclaimed after drinking it, “By Jove! That is the real hanky-panky.”

Hanky Panky

11/2 ounces gin

11/2 ounces sweet vermouth

1/4 ounces Fernet-Branca

Orange peel

Stir, strain, garnish with orange peel.


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