Black Russian and the blackness of the coffee liqueur. Black Russian The Black Russian is a cocktail of vodka and coffee liqueur. It contains five parts vodka to two parts coffee liqueur, per IBA specified ingredients. Traditionally, the drink is made by pouring the vodka over ice cubes or cracked ice in an old-fashioned glass, followed by the coffee liqueur. This combination first appeared in 1949 and is ascribed to Gustave Tops, a Belgian barman, who created it at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels in honor of Perle Mesta, then United States Ambassador to Luxembourg. The cocktail owes its name to the
Cocktail Cocktail A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink, which is either a combination of spirits, or one or more spirits along with other ingredients such as fruit juice, lemonade, flavored syrup, or cream. The Oxford Dictionaries define cocktail as "An alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice or cream". A cocktail more specifically may mean a beverage with at least three flavors, one of which is alcohol. More specifically still, it must contain alcohol, a sugar, and a bitter/citrus. When a mixed drink contains only a distilled spirit and a mixer,