For many years the most popular adult beverage in Chicago was a cocktail created in and named after a town on Boston’s South Shore: Cohasset Punch.
The drink combined rum, wine and several secret ingredients served in a chilled champagne glass over a brandy-soaked peach. It made its debut at a summer soiree in Cohasset, Mass., then quickly caught on in Gilded Age Chicago. Swanky restaurants and opulent railroad dining cars served it throughout the 1940s.
In 1934, a huge neon sign featuring Minot’s Ledge Light and the motto “Home of Cohasset Punch” went up in front of a West Loop saloon. Tens of thousands of commuters passed under the sign every weekday, and more than a few stopped in for a quick one before taking the train home.
Then in 1986, a wrecking ball took down the building and the landmark sign. For nearly four decades, Cohasset Punch disappeared from the cocktail scene.
And now it’s back.
Origins of Cohasset Punch
The actor William H. Crane played long runs in Chicago’s Hooley Theatre and at the opera house. He often patronized Williams & Newman, a posh saloon in the heart of the city’s theater district. Williams & Newman served fancy cocktails and sold liquor wholesale.
View from the Yacht Club in Cohasset, Mass.
Owners Lewis Williams, the business brain, and Tom Newman, the mixologist, were both well-dressed, sophisticated gentlemen. In the late 1890s, Crane invited Williams to his home in Cohasset, a summer resort for wealthy Bostonians and popular with actors and yachtsmen.
At a soiree, Williams heard the guests discuss the superiority of New England rum cocktails. He wired his partner, asking him to come up with a rum drink to wow Crane’s guests. It should “surpass anything ever before imbibed by any living soul,” he wrote. Newman sent a cask of Cohasset Punch by railcar within 24-hours. The drink was a hit and a legend was born. When Newman sent a telegram asking what to call the new drink, Williams replied with one word: “Cohasset.”
Williams and Newman served Cohasset Punch at their Chicago saloon. Then in 1899 they began selling it in bottles. They put an image of Minot’s Ledge Light, just outside Cohasset, on the label. It remained popular for decades. Chicagoans drank so much of it that a trade journal wrote, “what the mint julep is to the South, Cohasset Punch is to Chicago.”
Cohasset Punch Gets a New Home
Williams and Newman retired in 1916, but they sold the recipe for Cohasset Punch to Carl Ladner. Ladner, a German-born saloonkeeper, opened Ladner Bros. saloon on West Madison Street in the Loop. He served Cohasset Punch by the glass, and with his brother, Frank, he distributed it wholesale in bottles. It closed during Prohibition. Then Carl’s son, John, reopened the bar after Prohibition and put up the huge neon “Home of Cohasset Punch” sign–with Minot’s Ledge Light.
Minots Ledge Light
It was the kind of place that had singing canaries behind the bar and a pennant for every Major League Baseball team. It sold fried lake perch and cans of dehydrated water with instructions to “just add water.”
In 1938, a letter appeared in the Chicago Tribune describing the feeling one has after three or four glasses of Cohasset Punch. “[A] pleasant mellowness steals over you, your imagination glows, you discover humor you never possessed. Then suddenly you push your chair back to stand up, and lo, your legs are merely attached to your body for appearance’s sake!”
When Tommy Ohman bought the tavern in 1975, he continued to sell Cohasset Punch in bottles and by the glass. But in 1986, a developer tore down the building to make way for a 125-story “sky needle” that never got built.
Four decades passed. In 2024, G.R. Shutters, L.L.C. reintroduced Cohasset Punch in bottles. It’s available in Illinoiis and through online retailer Seelbach’s.
The modern label shows Crane’s catboat Chloe by the lighthouse, and Crane’s steam yacht The Senator, named for one of his best-known plays.
A modern bottle of Cohasset Punch
William H. Crane
Crane achieved celebrity in the early 20th century on stage and, at the end of his career, on screen. He was born in Leicester, Mass., in 1845 and educated in Boston private schools. He made his stage debut at the age of 18, singing “The Daughter of the Regiment” for a traveling stage troupe. For 12 years he performed as part of the immensely popular Robson & Crane comedy duo.
William H. Crane, actor and godfather to Cohasset Punch
He then achieved stardom on his own, playing bluff and hearty characters in comic roles. His stature went beyond the theater. At his farewell dinner, attendees who attended in his honor included Gen. Leonard Wood, newspaper publisher Melville Stone and university president Nicholas Murray Butler.
New England Rum
Newman made that first batch of Cohasset Punch with rum made in Medford, Mass. Medford was one of many New England port towns where merchant ships brought molasses from the West Indies and distilleries sprang up.
Rum-making became the largest and most lucrative industry in colonial New England. Before the American Revolution, every man, woman and child in New England drank an average of 3.6 gallons of rum every year.
Bottle of Cohasset Punch from the 1980s
Many Puritans had stills in their homes to make rum for medicinal purposes and to offer to guests. By the middle of the 17th century, Rhode Island had more than two dozen distilleries and Massachusetts more than 60.
By the 19th century, New England’s rum business went into decline. The British cut off access to cheap molasses. Once the westward migration got going, the U.S. interior produced a huge source of grain, used to make whiskey. Most New England distilleries closed.
You can still get New England rum, though. Use it to make something akin to Cohasset Punch. Here’s the recipe:
1.5 ounces of dark or New England rum
1 ounce of vermouth (sweet or dry)
Half a lemon
1-2 dash orange bitters
One Del Monte canned peach half
Place the canned peach in a flat champagne glass and fill half full with shaved ice. Pour in rum, vermouth, lemon juice, and bitters, stir. Pour in a half ounce of syrup from the can of peaches.
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Image of “Home of Cohasset Punch” sign courtesy of the Chicago History Museum [I-027840]. Photo by Glenn E. Dahlby, March 29, 1957. 1980s bottle of Cohasset Punch By Grshutters – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148567193. Modern bottle of Cohasset Punch By Grshutters – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148525391
