Was The Moscow Mule Really Invented In Moscow?
The short answer to the question posed in the title is no, of course not, no more so than Russian dressing comes from that same country or the French dip sandwich is a product of France. In fact, the Moscow Mule and French dip may both come from the same city, that being Los Angeles. (Russian dressing, not to be confused with Thousand Island dressing, is the outlier since it hails from New Hampshire.) There is a possibility, however, that the drink may have originated in New York City. At any rate, it is a thoroughly American libation.
As to the name: "Moscow" refers to the fact that the cocktail is made with vodka. It dates back to the 1940s, at which time vodka was fairly new to the U.S. market. The first American vodka brand, Smirnoff, dates to the mid-1930s (before that was Prohibition, so opening a distillery was a no-go). Imported Russian vodka, however, was not available until the '70s. The "Mule" part of the name may have been added to the drink's name for alliterative purposes, but it could also refer to the fact that the mixer — ginger beer — has more of a kick to it than ginger ale, cola, or other, tamer sodas.
The copper mug that helped popularize the drink was a marketing stunt
If you order a Moscow Mule in some bars, it may be served to you in a copper mug. You may have also seen such mugs in thrift stores, or perhaps your grandparents owned a set. What's up with that? These mugs go way back with the Moscow Mule, and may have helped to make it popular back in the day. By some accounts, they also helped drive the Moscow Mule revival of the early 00s, since craft-obsessed mixologists still considered vodka a bit plebeian until they were won over by the fancy barware. (Clearly vodka and Mules have both now thoroughly caught on, as evidenced by Moscow Mule-flavored vodka and Moscow Mule potato chips.)
Copper mugs figure prominently in several competing Moscow Mule origin stories. In the New York one, the drink came first, then the consortium that created it (a bar owner-turned-ginger beer seller and two liquor company execs) purchased the mugs to promote it. In a Los Angeles variant, a woman trying to flog her copper mugs persuaded that same bar owner from the New York story to use them for his drink. (John "Jack" Morgan and his bar-slash-ginger beer brand Cock'n'Bull were based in L.A., but apparently, the man got around a bit.) While neither of the copper mug origin stories can be accepted with any kind of certainty, there's no denying that these one-of-a-kind cocktail glasses serve as a striking visual shortcut for this one specific drink.