Buy Photo Adam Seger prepared Kentucky Fosters at the Oakroom in the Seelbach Hilton Hotel in September 1998. (Photo: CJ File Photo)Buy Photo 
 
 The man who claimed to bring back the famed Seelbach Cocktail admitted to the New York Times that the entire story was a promotional move. 
 
 Adam Seger, former director of restaurants for the Seelbach Hotel, said that the cocktail – a bourbon-champagne drink believed to be part of the downtown hotel's history – is actually his creation. He also admitted to concocting the tale of its invention, which has become a part of Louisville lore. 
 
 “I was nobody,” said Seger, who recently helped open The Tuck Room in downtown Manhattan to the Times. “I had no previous accolades in the bar world. I knew I could make a great drink. I wanted it to be this promotion for the hotel, and I felt the hotel needed a signature cocktail. How could you have a place that F. Scott Fitzgerald hung out in that doesn’t have a damn cocktail?” 
 
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 According to a story published in the Courier-Journal on Dec. 17, 1997, Seger said that an Irish hotel school intern discovered the recipe for the drink before he began his tenure as director of restaurants. He decided to include the recipe on the menu as an homage to the history of the hotel, which inspired Fitzgerald's novel, "The Great Gatsby." 
 
 "The explanation he gives for its creation is this, that a bartender at the old Rathskeller bar opened a bottle of champagne, whose contents shot into the air. The bartender grabbed a customer's Manhattan cocktail to catch the overflowing champagne," wrote the Courier-Journal. 
 
 Shortly after the initial story, the drink was included in “New Classic Cocktails,” a 1997 book by Gaz Regan and Mardee Haidin Regan. It later found its way into “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails," a book by historian Ted Haigh, also known as Dr. Cocktail. 
 
 The Courier-Journal continued to report the story numerous times, including most recently in a Q-and-A with a Seelbach Hotel bartender in January 2013. That article remains linked on the hotel's website. 
 
 "In 1995, the hotel's restaurant director, Adam Seger, discovered the recipe and put it back on the hotel's cocktail menu," the 2013 story said. "In short time, the Seelbach Cocktail has been established as a true classical cocktail and featured on menus all over the world." 
 
 In the Times story, which was posted Monday, Seger said that nobody, including the newspaper and the authors, ever asked him to show the old menu with the cocktail in it. He recently admitted his fabrication to Gaz Regan. 
 
 “To be honest, I always suspected that Adam had created the drink, but I really, really loved it, his story was almost plausible, and I needed recipes for ‘New Classic Cocktails,' " he said, according to the Times. 
 
 While the hotel, now known as the Seelbach Hilton, is aware of the Seger's transgression, a hotel official said that it has no plans to remove the drink from its menu. 
 
 The cocktail "has certainly been a tradition of the hotel and will remain part of its future," said Matthew Willinger, the hotel’s director of public relations, according to the Times. 
 
 The Seelbach Cocktail (Photo: File Photo) 
 
 The Seelbach Cocktail (Makes 1 drink) 
 
 1 ounce Old Forester bourbon 
 
 1/2 ounce triple sec 
 
 7 dashes Angostura bitters 
 
 7 dashes Peychaud bitters 
 
 5 ounces chilled Korbel Brut 
 
 1 orange twist, for garnish 
 
 Combine the bourbon, triple sec and both bitters in a champagne flute; stir briefly, just to blend. Pour in the champagne. Twist the orange peel and rub the exterior of it around the rim of the flute; drop the twist into the cocktail. Serve at once. 
 
 (Source: Previously published in the Courier-Journal on Dec. 17, 1997.) 
 
 Justin Sayers can be reached at (502) 582-4252 or jsayers@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @_JustinSayers. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://cjky.it/2fatRmT ||||| For the last 20 years, if you were in the bar business and knew one thing about the bartender Adam Seger, it was that he was the man behind the Seelbach cocktail. 
 
 The Seelbach is named after the Seelbach Hotel (today the Seelbach Hilton), a storied century-old lodging in downtown Louisville, Ky., that is mentioned briefly in “The Great Gatsby.” Shortly after being put in charge of the hotel’s bar and restaurant operations in 1995, Mr. Seger declared that he had discovered a recipe for a pre-Prohibition cocktail that was once the hotel’s signature drink. He tested it, liked it and put it on the menu. 
 
 The news media soon picked up on the tale, and within a few years, the Seelbach cocktail was regarded as a rescued classic. It’s a tantalizing back story, one that has charmed cocktail writers and aficionados for years, and there’s only one thing wrong with it: None of it is true.
– When Adam Seger was brought on as head of restaurant operations at the storied Seelbach Hotel (now the Seelbach Hilton) in downtown Louisville, Ky., he announced that he'd stumbled upon the recipe of a pre-Prohibition drink that used to be the hotel's signature drink and that he tried it, he enjoyed it, and he was putting in back on the menu. But as the New York Times reports, the "rescued classic" that gained fast notoriety and established Seger as a brand name was in fact Seger's own creation, a "ruse" as the Louisville Courier-Journal calls it. Now Seger, who "carried this around" for 21 years, has decided to finally come clean. "I was nobody," says Seger, who left the hotel in 2001, is now 47, and recently helped open the Tuck Room in Manhattan. "I knew I could make a great drink. I wanted it to be this promotion for the hotel, and I felt the hotel needed a signature cocktail. How could you have a place that F. Scott Fitzgerald hung out in that doesn’t have a damn cocktail?" Everyone bought the story (even the historian known as Dr. Cocktail who wrote a book about vintage spirits) and loved the drink, which is made with bourbon, triple sec, bitters, sparkling wine, and garnished with an orange twist. Even the hotel is sticking with the drink as its signature cocktail, saying it's become a hotel tradition and "will remain part of its future." (This is Obama's cocktail of choice.)