The Old West saloon, with swinging doors and a bar filled with dusty and tired cowboys, has been thoroughly cemented in our minds after years of fictionalization in print and on the silver screen. When the barkeep asks what one such character will have, the answer is invariably whiskey. A small glass is poured, and the cowboy slaps an unknown coin or two down by way of payment. The quantities are generally irrelevant to any such tale, but it does make us wonder: What did these spirits actually cost in those days? To find the answer, we spoke with Mark Boardman, Old West historian and editor of Arizona’s Tombstone Epitaph newspaper, published just steps away from the O.K. Corral Gunfight Site.
雖然那幅塵土飛揚、破舊酒館的形象幾乎立刻就被打破，但取而代之的卻是更清晰的現實。博德曼說：「隨著城鎮成長—有時成長得相當快速—他們會選擇高檔飲品，以營造出精緻的氛圍。」在許多西部電影中出現的 unlabeled 瓶裝的廉價威士忌，大概並非整個西部的常見供應。低價威士忌確實存在，但不出所料，大多數顧客都想喝到好酒。
「在這種地方——尤其是難以抵達的繁榮城鎮——一瓶上等威士忌的價格可能是3美元，」博德曼解釋道。「一杯（或同等量）大概是25美分。」以野性西部時代中段的年份——以1875年為參考——花3美元購買那瓶酒，換算成現今的貨幣大約為91美元。至於0.25美元的一杯，大約是7.60美元左右。
1870s whiskey prices versus today’s
It’s difficult to define exactly what qualifies as a fine whiskey when comparing the present to a century and half ago. Generally, whiskey experts tend to say that the $40 to $70 range is where premium bottles of whiskey can be found, and the market is full of good bottles of whiskey under $60 — roughly one-third cheaper than what a cowboy paid for whiskey in the Old West. Even the budget whiskeys of today, though — those in the $20 to $25 range — are much better than what was being served on the cheap back then.
“The really cheap stuff cost about a nickel,” Boardman says, referring to the price of a single drink. That would equate to around $1.50 today. An inexpensive drink, to be sure, but of inferior quality than what you’d find in even the lowest modern dive bar. This wasn’t the sort of rotgut made with all sorts of poisonous chemicals, but this horrible-tasting cheap Wild West whiskey may have been adulterated with river water, molasses, and tobacco, intended to dilute, flavor, and color precious whiskey to stretch it a bit further.
在舊西部威士忌桶的最低端，是所謂的 rotgut（劣酒），這是一個籠統的稱呼，指那些實質上幾乎不配擁有該稱號的酒品。『在舊西部，除非人們自行製作，劣酒是很少見的，』博德曼透露，但也有不少與之相關的故事。其中一種被稱為『tarantula juice』的舊西部“威士忌”，是由木材酒精、硫酸、月桂精油、氰化氫、菸草油與士的寧等混合而成。像這樣可怕的混合物，理所當然值得感到慶幸的是監管者不再允許此類產品上市。
Shots of whiskey weren’t actually the most popular Old West libation
Interestingly, though, as much as popular media has fixed the idea in our minds that straight whiskey was the drink of the Wild West, historians beg to differ. “In Tombstone, for example,” Boardman shares, “if you check drink ads and menus, the most popular beverages were mixed drinks — gin fizzes and the like.” It might shatter the image a bit, picturing that dusty cowboy sipping daintily at a frothy gin fizz in a coupe glass rather than slamming back one whiskey after another, but one should think twice before arguing with a historian.
“Whiskey and beer were way down the list in terms of demand,” Boardman says. “If folks were going to a fancy saloon, they wanted a fancy drink as well.” Cocktails, of course, weren’t the only other offering that one might find in such a place. Old West cowboys also drank sarsaparilla, a cousin of root beer made from a vine native to Central and South America, and even though the beer found in saloons might’ve been bad, it was another option. Add to that the many alcoholic tonics, elixirs, and bitters consumed at the time, and the bar menu starts to look more modern than the movies would have you believe.
With a rough inflation-adjusted price of over $90 a bottle, whiskey wasn’t cheap in the Old West. That said, drinks like whiskey punches, whiskey slings, and whiskey cocktails all made use of that signature spirit. With a per-drink cost of around $7.60, things start to look a bit more reasonable. Compared to the $12 to $30 average cost of a cocktail in Las Vegas, that’s downright affordable.
