Why do they call bar drinks with cheap alcohol "well" drinks?

Question

This never made any sense

Answer 1

a "well" is where a bartender keeps all of his/her bottles of liquor for regularly priced drinks. A well is a usually a trough that can hold 10-15 bottles at below waist level. It is easy access for a bartender to grab a bottle to make a drink.
Normally, with better alcohol, it is displayed for the general public to view. With a good bartender, he/she will "upsell" to better liquor to increase sales. But, because the well holds your average liquor, and is easily accessed, most drinks are made from that location of the bar.

Answer 2

The bottles with the cheap stuff are usually in a shelf on the back of the bar called the "well". The expensive stuff is on the back bar and you have to "call" for them if you have someone working the backbar.

Answer 3

The fact that bartenders keep cheap bottles in a "well" is a common reason to mistake that for why well drinks are called well drinks. The actual reason is because, when you order a drink and, being a cheapskate, you don't specify a premium brand, the bartender says to him or herself "Well, I guess I'll just go ahead and give him the cheap stuff."

Answer 4

Because in the old west the well water tasted the worst.. but it was the easiest to afford so everyone drank it. (That is my hypothesis).The "well" drinks are not neccesarily the cheap stuff.. it is just the most common stuff. My local bar keeps Jack Daniels at the well, not the cheap stuff like Beam or Brooks.

Answer 5

The best stuff is Top Shelf sitting on the top shelf.
The well drinks are kept under the "well" of the bar or the cheaper booze. Never drink that stuff it will make you sick.

Answer 6

It comes from the bottles under the bar in wells. The good stuff is on the shelf for looks.

Answer 7

ingesting rubbing alcohol is amazingly risky and may reason large complications even lack of life. a minimum of extreme abdomen misery. Kitty Dukakis whose husband ran for Pres againist the first George Bush had to be hospitalized for ingesting rubbing alcohol. Her ingesting went out of control after her husband lost the race. A stone alcoholic. I have considered difficult center alcoholics drink cough syrup or Nyquil even mouthwash for the alcohol in it, yet they received't very last lengthy in the experience that they try rubbing alcohol.

Answer 8

Because most bars have something called a speed well which is located right beside their ice bin for conveinance, Those bottles that are kept in there are your WELL (cheap brands) of alcohol
basically your vodka, gin, rum, scotch, bourban, whisky, tequila and triple sec.

Answer 9

usually it refers to the bottom of the well? in cases like this it's the leftover crap after all the dirt and nastiness has settled and this id the reference to well drinks. simply to get you drunk, not to drink.

Answer 10

I've always seen them referred to as Rail drinks. And I have no idea why.