the sour toe

As promised, here's the video of my drink, the Sour Toe Cocktail.

This atrocity took place in the Downtown Hotel of Dawson City in the Yukon Territory.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun...


The story of the toe, as taken from www.sourtoecocktail.com, is as follows:

Toe #1 was that of Louie Liken, trapper, placer miner, and in the 1920's, rum runner. Louie and his brother Otto would cross the border to the United States in a blizzard by dog team to deliver their alcoholic cargo. During one such outing, Louie stepped into overflow and got his foot wet.Fearing that the Northwest Mounted Police were on their trail they had to continue their trip. As a result of extended exposure to the cold, Louie's big toe froze.To prevent the onset of gangrene it was necessary to amputate.

Lacking faith in doctors the brothers had no intention of traveling 60 miles to Dawson and paying one to do what they could just as easily accomplish on their own.The first step in the amputation was anaesthesia. Consuming large amounts of their 180% overproof rum, they soon felt that they were sufficiently drunk to continue with the amputation. Louie stuck out his frozen toe as Otto lifted the woodcutting axe. With one swing the toe was removed. As a reminder of the incident the brothers kept the toe, pickled in a jar of alcohol.

Years later, when cleaning the brothers' cabin, the toe was discovered by Captain Dick Stevenson. After conferring, Captain Dick and his friends decided on the rules of the Sourtoe Cocktail and started serving it at the Eldorado Hotel in 1973. In July 1980, a placer miner named Garry Younger was trying for the Sourtoe record. On his thirteenth glass of Sourtoe champagne his chair tipped over backwards and he swallowed the toe. Sadly, Toe #1 was not recovered.