The Wish for Grace cocktail was created for a celebratory event at the Smithsonian museum in Washington D.C, by Steven Liles of Smuggler’s Cove Bar in San Francisco, California.

The cocktail was invented in honour of the two hundredth anniversary of the “Star-Spangled Banner”, the national anthem of the United States.

On 14 September 1814, Francis Scott Key pens a poem later set to music and in 1931 becomes America’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Originally titled “The Defense of Fort McHenry”, the poem was written after Key witnessed the Maryland fort being bombarded by the British during the war of 1812.

For the recipe, Steven Liles choose New England rum and Madeira wine from Portugal which would have been popular in taverns by that time.