The Original Tequila Cocktail? How the Marijuana-Laced ‘Gringo Killer’ Found Its Boozy Footing During Prohibition
One of the first tequila cocktails was — allegedly — invented by a swashbuckling adventurer who fancied a splash of liquid marijuana. (Photo: Justin Aikin/Unsplash)
If there existed a textbook of tequila cocktail history, you’d probably recognize most of the names. Modern icons like the Margarita, Paloma and Tequila Sunrise, right alongside lesser-known but equally important creations like the Mexican Firing Squad and El Diablo.
What if we told you that the devilish Gringo Killer — made with brandy, liquid marijuana and fermented pulque — might have predated them all?
The whimsical concoction was first recorded by Harry McElhone in 1927’s Barflies and Cocktails. McElhone, by all accounts one of the most famous bartenders of the early 20th century, is credited with inventing the Bloody Mary, Boulevardier, Sidecar and more at his now centuries-old Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, France.
(Photo: The Cary Collection)
His description of the Gringo Killer was as brief as it was enthralling:
“Mexican Johnny O’Brien brings a breath, as it were, of the Rio Grande. Maybe all the revoluting down there can be traced to Johnny’s ‘Gringo Killer.’ One part pulque, two parts tequila, one part brandy, and a dash of liquid marijuana; this, according to Johnny, is guaranteed to put a tarantula to sleep for a year.”
“Put a tarantula to sleep” indeed; this potent crossfade of a cocktail has the blackout potential to put the Long Island Iced Tea to shame.
It’s possible that the drink was served at Harry’s Bar in the 1920s, though it seems unlikely. Brandy and liquid marijuana (legal in France until 1953) wouldn’t have been too hard to find. Tequila, on the other hand, didn’t have much by way of international distribution until the 1970s. Pulque — a milky fermented agave beverage popular in pre-Hispanic Mexico — is still relegated to niche status to this day.
In the absence of other accounts, we need to look elsewhere. Who then, you might ask, is this intriguingly named “Mexican Johnny O’Brien”?
“Dynamite” Johnny O’Brien (Photo: Irish America)
Though McElhone never specified exactly, the moniker almost certainly belonged to Dynamite Johnny O’Brien, a famed Irish sailor who supplied Cuban rebels with weapons during the Spanish-American War. His daring exploits were well documented by tabloids of the day; charging headfirst at Spanish gunboats, dining with the Royal Family of Hawaii, fighting off cannibals and carrying 60 tons of dynamite across the Gulf of Mexico during an electric storm (his “Dynamite” namesake).
When Barflies and Cocktails was published in 1927, the name Johnny O’Brien would’ve been known to readers alongside legends like Blackbeard and Francis Drake. A modern-day pirate with an absurd marijuana-laced cocktail to boot.
The New York Times published an obituary for O’Brien in 1917. If he shared the recipe for the Gringo Killer before his death, that would date the cocktail earlier than the Paloma (1943) and even the Margarita (accounts vary, though the earliest contended invention was 1925).
That would put the Gringo Killer in the running as perhaps the first tequila cocktail ever recorded.
Of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find the concoction served at any bar, speakeasy or museum today. Nonetheless, this might be the easiest time in history to mix one up for yourself.
Marijuana, and by extension liquid marijuana, is slowly but surely finding legal footing across the United States. And though there’s virtually no commercial production of pulque outside of select hotspots in Mexico City, a growing number of pulquerias are beginning to crop up for discerning drinkers across the American Southwest and Northeast.
If you have a death wish, then, by all means, give the Gringo Killer a dangerous shot. Just know that it may be your last.
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