General Beauregard’s is a bar in Athens, Georgia, known for its sweet tea, live country music, and brazen, nauseating dedication to Confederacy. Many people readily believed an image of a drink menu offering a “N*****ita” shooter circulating on social media late Monday night came from General Beauregard’s menu. However, the bar’s owner says the viral image is a hoax.

An alleged image of General Beauregard’s drink menu displaying the “N*****ita,” a shooter comprising “2 tequila,” “1 watermelon,” “splash sour,” began circulating on social media late Monday night and was passed to Gawker early Tuesday morning. An Athens resident sent the info with an image urging people to contact Athens government officials about the bar:

When asked about the special’s appearance on the menu, considering the fact that there seemed to be only a single image circulating through multiple sources, the tipster elaborated: “Apparently, this drink is not on the public menu. However, the image is taken from a behind-the-bar employee cheat sheet. An employee at a local copy shop was asked to laminate 5 copies of this sheet and kept one for himself.”

The image being passed around online was allegedly taken of this copy, and continues to be shared under the assumption that the shooter is part of the bar’s public drink menu:

Many took to the bar’s Facebook page to voice their outrage at the bar’s alleged drink special. Often bundled with their criticism were complaints about the overall theme of General Beauregard’s, a theme which allowed a large group of people to look at a watermelon and tequila drink special called the “N*****ita” and think, “Yeah—that’s probably something they serve at General Beauregard’s.”

This afternoon, General Beauregard’s owner Daniel Simmons spoke with the Athens Banner-Herald, denying the bar offers the drink: “We had absolutely no knowledge of, and would never condone, this image that is claimed to be our drink menu,” he said.

Simmons continued, denying General Beauregard’s offers menus to customers at all, let alone racist ones—their drink specials are listed on a chalkboard—and insisting the bar has never offered this particular special, saying it is “not something we have ever served to customers or advertised and would never be approved by ownership.”

Simmons did not specifically deny the existence of a bar “cheat sheet,” and Flagpole reports that they’ve received screenshots of an employee confirming the existence of the offensively-named shot on Facebook. Attempts made by Gawker to contact the bar have so far gone unanswered.

It’s easy to see how one might think a bar like General Beauregard’s might publicly offer such a special. The bar, named after the Confederate Civil War general, boasted multiple confederate flags in its interior and hanging from its exterior until June’s shooting in Charleston prompted wide opposition to the racist symbol. According to Flagpole’s Matthew Pulver, some employees and regulars were unhappy about the owner’s decision to remove the flags:

[Bartender Mack] Peeples and a few regulars at the bar were unhappy about the decision. Taking the flag down “was detrimental to our brand,” said Peeples. “I feel like the flag symbolizes our bar. It wasn’t a symbol of anything else.” He reported that some patrons had complained about the flag being taken down, a sentiment echoed by the handful of guys at the bar.

Pulver writes the Confederate flag is still represented in the bar, “tucked away a little in a display case with bar memorabilia.”

When the General Beauregard’s first opened in the early 2000s, The Red and Black interviewed owners Daniel Simmons and Gardner Dominick about the bar’s Confederate theme which was, already, earning disapproval from the community:

“We’ve heard nothing but positive feedback,” Simmons said. “We’re not trying to be racist.”

Dominick added that it’s not about racism, it’s about giving Athens something new.

Something new.

General Beauregard’s also deleted this confusingly racist tweet this morning:

I guess the lesson is: Don’t have a racist bar.

Would be a lot harder to screw you with a viral campaign if your bar’s not already racist.

UPDATE 4:49 p.m.: Gawker received screenshots of an alleged General Beauregard’s employee seemingly confirming the existence of the cocktail—excuse me, shot—along with his About.me page, where he lists Beauregard’s as his employer:

We also received this image allegedly taken from the bar’s Facebook page, though now removed, which the tipster concedes is not “directly related” but illustrates the bar’s “culture.”

Indeed.

Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.