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A cocktail is a style of mixed drink. A cocktail usually contains one or more types of liquor and flavourings, usually one or more of a liqueur, fruit, sauce, honey, milk or cream, spices, etc. The cocktail became popular during Prohibition in the United States primarily to mask the taste of bootlegged alcohol, the bartenders at a speakeasy would mix it with other ingredients, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. 

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Taco's Featured Mixed Drink Recipes

1.) Hawaiian Sugar Plantation Shot

2.) Bluetail Fly Cocktail

3.) Tea Toddy 2 Coffee / Tea

4.) Cranberry Apple Martini Cocktail

Cocktail Mixed Drink History

Cocktails became popular during Prohibition in the United States mostly to hide the taste of bootlegged alcohol, the bartenders at a speakeasy would mix it with other ingredients, both non-alcoholic and alcoholic. Before the 1980s, cocktails were made predominantly with whiskey, gin or rum-- vodka was not very common. After the 1970s, the popularity of vodka increased sharply. By the 1980s Vodka was the major base for mixed drinks. Many cocktails traditionally made with gin, such as gimlets, or the martini, may now be served by default with vodka. Other common cocktail ingredients include: carbonated beverages such as soda water, tonic water and seltzer. Liqueurs are also very common in cocktails and mixed drinks. 

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia :
The earliest known printed use of the word "cocktail," as originally determined by Dr. David Wondrich in October 2005, was from "The Farmer's Cabinet", April 28, 1803, p [2]: "11. Drank a glass of coctail--excellent for the head ... Call'd at the Doct's. found Burnham--he looked very wise--drank another glass of cocktail." The second earliest known printed use of the word "cocktail" (and the most well-known) was in the May 13, 1806 edition of the Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York , where the paper provided the following answer to what a cocktail was: "Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters--it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else." The first publication of a bartenders' guide which included cocktail recipes was in 1862: How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon Vivant's Companion, by Professor Jerry Thomas. In addition to listings of recipes for Punches, Sours, Slings, Cobblers, Shrubs, Toddies, Flips, and a variety of other types of mixed drinks were 10 recipes for drinks referred to as "Cocktails". A key ingredient which differentiated "cocktails" from other drinks in this compendium, was the use of bitters as an ingredient, although it is not to be seen in very many modern cocktail recipes. During Prohibition in the United States (1919-1933), when alcohol possession was illegal, cocktails were still consumed in establishments known as speakeasies. Not only was the quality of the alcohol available far lower than was previously used, but the skill and knowledge of the bartenders would also decline significantly during this time. 

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