A man in a suit, overcoat slung over his forearm, enters a small-town restaurant and sidles up to the bar. Placing his coat on a barstool, he greets a coworker to quickly catch up on their predicament: Amid a historic snowstorm, they’re stuck in Podunk America and their company vehicle needs repairs. What else can they do but drink?
“Jim Beam, ice, water,” is his order.
And hers?
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Surely one of the most iconic yet strangest drink calls in cinema history.
“Sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist, please.”
This is, of course, the 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” which finds that aforementioned man, Bill Murray’s Phil Connors, trapped in an ever-repeating Feb. 2. Just as this cynical weatherman nods his head, staring blankly as he tries to memorize the order of Rita Hanson (Andie MacDowell), we, too, can’t help but wonder how such an unorthodox drink became one of the centerpieces of this comedy classic.
My Favorite Drink
While ordering sweet vermouth might not be that out of place in, say, a downtown Italian wine bar or hip Spanish restaurant in New York City circa 2025, to order it in 1993 in a tiny Pennsylvania town like Punxsutawney seems beyond bizarre.
Modern bars and restaurants in major urban environments might have several sweet vermouths available to sip — a robust Carpano Antica, a nutty Lustau Vermut Rojo, a more bitter option like Punt e Mes — but back in the early 1990s, back in an era when very few people were even drinking Manhattans, it’s highly unlikely a small-town restaurant would have anything more than a dusty bottle of Martini & Rossi. Surely oxidized and kept unrefrigerated, it would hardly be something that a big-city sophisticate like Rita would want to drink, and Phil’s reaction on first sipping it later in the scene — going slightly cross-eyed as he struggles to swallow — tells us all we need to know.
Despite all this, Rita calls it her “favorite drink” — one she always uses to drink to “world peace.”
Having watched this movie countless times over the years, I’ve always wondered: When and, more importantly, why was this strange call included in the movie?
Gold, If You’ve Got It
In “How to Write Groundhog Day,” screenwriter Danny Rubin’s 2012 book on his penning of the movie, he doesn’t mention sweet vermouth once in the book’s 278 pages, even if he references that scene in the book’s opening epigraph. (“To the groundhog. And to world peace. And also my parents.”)
Interestingly, in Rubin’s original script from April 1990, which is included in full in the book, the scene in question instead takes place at a nightclub and doesn’t include Rita at all, but rather a random woman named Tess.
Fully aware of his ever-repeating life in limbo, Phil has — by this point in the original draft — decided to use his situation to seduce and pick up women, crassly noting in a voiceover that he’s already scored with 49 of the 63 “eligible” women in Punxsutawney. In the scene with Tess at the nightclub, he orders a white wine and Tess orders a whiskey. Within a few repeats of the scene, Phil has seduced her.
“When I first got the idea for Groundhog Day — the idea that a man is stuck in an eternally repeating day — this pick-up scene was one of the first things I thought of,” Rubin writes, “and thinking about it made me certain that I had a movie worth making.”
However, in an endnotes section of the book called “Great Pick-Up Lines,” Rubin explains that director Harold Ramis eventually told him that the best scenes and lines in any movie need to go to the main characters. And, thus, in the first studio rewrite from 1991, the scene moved to take place in a mere bar, with Phil ordering a light beer on draft and Rita opting for a Cognac. For the first time, the two toast to world peace.
“Harold probably figured out that choosing an offensively manly drink for Phil was a good character choice and then contrasting that with a sweet, syrupy ‘lady’s’ drink that would make him gag to taste it for the first time was the best way to exploit the bit — and, of course, I agree.”
Ramis’s second revision to the script was submitted on Jan. 7, 1992, written with apparently uncredited help from Murray, according to Rubin’s book. In this version, the scene takes place at “The Berghof Restaurant” — “a good chophouse,” according to the scene notes — and Phil orders a Jack Daniel’s, while Rita orders tequila with lime, “Gold, if you’ve got it.”
Those exact orders will continue through all the future minor revisions all the way up until Ramis’s final shooting script, delivered on Jan. 30, with Phil still ordering a Jack Daniel’s and Rita ordering tequila with lime.
Sweet Vermouth Stans
Despite it being such an oddball order, or perhaps because of this fact, an online fan base has developed around Rita’s sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist.
There are countless recipes online for how to make the simple drink. Fans share their love for the movie by drinking and writing about it. Many others make sure to knock one back on actual Groundhog Day, which falls on Feb. 2 every year. The order has infiltrated social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram — even vermouth brands get in on the effort, offering more elevated takes for enthusiasts to try.
For what it’s worth, we don’t actually see what brand of sweet vermouth the bartender pours. John M. Watson Sr., a jazz musician and actor who played the bartender, died in 2006, so there’s no way of verifying with him. (Interestingly, some online theories posit that Watson Sr.’s character is either Phil’s guardian angel or the one in control of the repeating time loop.)
But, of course, there are plenty of detractors to the idea of sipping sweet vermouth.
“Because of my love of the movie (and Rome) I thought this would be a good cocktail, maybe even a keeper for me,” writes Maura McGurk in the drinks blog “Pandemic Pub.” “I was wrong!”
Still, for a holiday that mostly lacks traditions (aside from pulling that rodent from his hole), the drink has become a part of the celebratory firmament as much as anything else. Even the movie’s principals are aware of it.
Last Groundhog Day, in honor of the 10th anniversary of Chicago native Harold Ramis’s death from autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a celebration was held in his hometown. The event was attended by Murray, his brother Brian Doyle-Murray (who played Mayor Buster Green in the movie), and Ramis’s wife Erica Mann Ramis. On the city’s Navy Pier, a set from the film was meticulously recreated; an actual groundhog was flown in from Woodstock, Ill. (the town the movie was shot in). Ramis’s legacy was toasted with…
Sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist.
On Harold’s Watch
“I’m pretty sure the final drink selection happened on Harold’s watch,” Rubin tells me when I track him down. “Harold probably figured out that choosing an offensively manly drink for Phil was a good character choice and then contrasting that with a sweet, syrupy ‘lady’s’ drink that would make him gag to taste it for the first time was the best way to exploit the bit — and, of course, I agree.”
Obviously, I wasn’t able to speak to the late Ramis. And, as far as I could tell, he only spoke to the scene once, in an interview with NPR’s “Fresh Air” back in 2005.
“I love the montage of where you really see the repetition working when Bill’s trying to seduce Andie MacDowell and it starts in a bar where he figures out what her favorite drink is and then next time he orders her favorite drink which surprises her,” Ramis told reporter Dave Davies.
But why would that be Rita’s favorite drink?
Rubin tipped me off that it might have been because it was another important woman’s favorite drink.
I stumbled upon an illegally uploaded YouTube copy of an old “Groundhog Day” DVD release, which featured an alternate track audio commentary from the late Ramis. And there, some 45 minutes into the film, the legendary director finally explains the mystery of Rita’s bizarre drink order:
“We made it sweet vermouth because that’s what my wife orders.”
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