***** Lavoska Barton, DJ and Bartender at Nickel City, Austin, Texas And that’s where we’ll pick up the story - from the bartenders who made it big, then brought it all back again. (That’s just naming a few.)Īnd because Hpnotiq entered the national radar from the backdrop of hip-hop music videos, the bright-blue spirit has always had a home in the club scene. Kelly sings most of “Ignition” in front of a wall of Hpnotiq bottles and Missy Elliott name-drops the blue liqueur in “One Two Step” with Ciara. Hpnotiq blew up.”īetween 20, Yakoby and Storm went from having sold 1,000 cases of Hpnotiq to 1 million cases, the fastest-growing sales in booze history.Īfter “Trade It All,” Hpnotiq bottles and references were virtually everywhere in hip-hop: Fabolous’ later video for “ It’s My Party” opens with “Ain’t no tellin’ what this Hpno’ll do to me,” R. Not only in New York, but in New Jersey to Delaware to D.C. “When that video hit, we were getting calls from all over. Storm and Yakoby were working through ideas, and Storm said, “What if we pronounce it differently? What if it’s hip-nah -tick?” Yakoby replied, “Try that name tomorrow,” and when Storm did, he sold 17 bottles.įrom there, through connections in clubs and the hip-hop community cultivated at Sony, Storm landed a bottle in Fabolous’ video for “Trade It All.” And I learned at a young age that if you really feel something in your gut, you have to take the chance and go for it. Storm took a case of Hpnotiq (which Yakoby was originally pronouncing hip-no-teek) to a massive Sony party, and a switch was flipped: “Everybody was drinking it,” Storm told Westchester Magazine in 2015. In 2001, Yakoby approached him asking for a hookup in the music scene. Storm, a Yonkers native, started his marketing career in the music business with an internship with Sony in 1993. Hpnotiq may never have left Long Island if it weren’t for Nick Storm, the so-called Million-Case Man. With seed money from who-knows-where, Yakoby holed up in his Long Island apartment for a year cranking out combination after combination of alcohols and fruit juices until he landed on the sky-blue combination of French vodka, cognac and “exotic fruit juices” recognized worldwide today. That is literally the origin story of what is still today one of the best-selling liqueurs in the U.S. “I was walking through Bloomingdale’s and saw this blue perfume in a beautiful bottle on a counter, and I thought, Wouldn’t that be great for a liqueur product?,” Yakoby told the New York Post in 2007. Are you ready for the Hpnotiq renaissance? The Perfume-Bottle Booze and the Million-Case Man It takes a lot of guts and pop-culture savvy, but bartenders around the country are committed to making Hpnotiq part of their schtick again. It was hilarious, like finding chicken McNuggets on the menu at a swanky restaurant, or wearing a Spice Girls shirt: a nod to people who remember, who can laugh at pop culture’s (and drinking culture’s) previous incarnations and obsessions, and maybe even get a little nostalgic for them. Sure enough, at the bottom of the house cocktail list was the Bartender’s Dare: a shot of Hpnotiq and a High Life. “Oh, yeah, it’s part of our Bartender’s Dare,” the bartender on duty told me. A well-established whiskey bar, Citizen was the last place I expected to see Hpnotiq.īut there it was, it all its frosty-blue glory. I was in middle school when the brand launched, and while Hpnotiq made its way through our high school parties, the liqueur had pretty much come and gone by the time I could legally drink, and definitely wasn’t stocked when I started bartending in 2010.

When I sat down at the bar at Citizen Public House near Fenway Park a few months ago, the bright-blue bottle practically jumped at me: Holy shit, you have Hpnotiq?! What is that doing here? It’s fucking weird, but for some reason, it’s delicious.Īnd now it’s back. Hpnotiq is a very particular, dare I say impossible-to-replicate flavor. It’s a relic of a forgotten time, but a guy at my bar ordered one the other day - only he just asked for Hennessy and “blue stuff.” “The only blue stuff I have is blue curaçao,” I told him, “and I can totally put that in Hennessy if you like, but I can’t guarantee it’ll taste good.” Have you heard of a drink called the Incredible Hulk? It’s equal parts Hennessy and Hpnotiq when you stir it, the drink gets angry and turns green. For better or worse, many of us will be forever Hpnotized. That would be Hpnotiq, the iconic club-scene beverage of the early aughts. For some, its bright-blue, sex-toy-shaped bottle is ironic - it’s “classy-trashy,” as one bartender in this story describes it - while for others it never stopped signaling a good time.

In 2002, he was $50 million richer and the owner of the fastest-selling liqueur in history. In 2001, Raphael Yakoby was a 25-year-old college dropout with zero business experience, living on Long Island.

Hypnotic drink 2000