The seventh entry in the series where my wife Sabrina and I journey through the wide wonderful world of classic cocktails by crafting and drinking recipes together at our home bar. Today let’s go back to fundamentals with one of the original sours, the Gimlet!
Recipe:
- 2 oz Murrell’s Row Gin Gin
- ¾ oz Fresh lime juice
- ¾ oz Simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water)
- Garnish: Lime wheel
Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice. Shake until cold (approx 15 seconds). Strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.
This was my first time making a Gimlet, and if memory serves, the first time I’ve drank one too. I’d put gin up there at the top of my list of most reached-for bottles in the liquor cabinet, but only for a very thin range of cocktails. Martinis, Negronis and gin and tonics consume the vast majority of my gin supply, so I’ve had fun branching out lately and using gin in some different drinks. But I’ve also noticed that I’m not in love with the combo of gin and citrus. I certainly wouldn’t pass one up if handed to me, but with both my prior Bronx Cocktail recipe and now the Gimlet, I realize that, for me, the citrus distracts from the essence of the gin rather than accentuating it. Perhaps I’m just too stuck in my old ways with my Negroni and Martini recipes that I’ve been making for years. Or perhaps, and more likely, I just make a shitty Bronx and Gimlet.
It was a tasty cocktail nonetheless, even if not the perfect fit for my particular palette.
The Gimlet is a classic drink and a core member of the “sour” family of drinks. A sour is a simple baseline recipe consisting solely of spirit, sour, and sweetener. The “golden ratio” for a sour recipe is 2 parts spirits, 1 part sour, and 1 part sweetener. 2:1:1. This serves as a helpful shorthand for drink formulation but most folks tweak their ingredient proportions based on the particular spirit, type of citrus, what they’re using for the sweetener, and of course, how the combo appeals to their personal tastes.
Compare the Gimlet to other sours, such as the Daiquiri and Whiskey Sour, for example, and you’ll see the pattern. A Gimlet is essentially the same recipe as a Daiquiri, only substituting rum for gin, and tweaking the lime/simple syrup proportions to play better with the base booze. A Whiskey Sour follows the same pattern, but uses lemon as the citrus and bourbon as the spirit.
Worth noting that the original Gimlet recipe, while still maintaining the spirit/sour/sweetener pattern, did not consist of lime juice and simple syrup like the recipe that I share above. The original recipe used Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial for the sour and sweet.
You may recognize Rose’s as the little green bottles found in the party section at the grocery store, often next to the bottles of grenadine and Bloody Mary mix. These days it’s made from high fructose corn syrup and is probably not a very accurate recreation of the original stuff. But back in the day it was what made a Gimlet a Gimlet.
Back in the 19th century, sailors in the Royal British Navy received a daily ration of limes to help prevent scurvy, which they would mix with their rations of booze (rum, mostly) as a way to preserve the lime juice. Presumably they soon grew accustomed to the taste. An enterprising fellow named Lachlan Rose came up with a better way to preserve lime juice, using sugar rather than booze and bottling it, giving it a more stable shelf life for the long ocean voyages of the British Navy, and ultimately giving the sailors their first bottled cocktail mixer.
And thus Rose’s Lime Cordial was born.
A British Royal Naval doctor named Thomas Gimlette is credited by some with mixing Rose’s with gin to create the first Gimlet, and slapping his last name on a recipe that was almost certainly drunk by many others before him. Other accounts say the drink is named after an old tool, the Gimlet, that was used to bore holes in wood, and likely into the barrels of booze stored on the Navy ship.
Whether the Gimlet was named after the dude Gimlette or the tool Gimlet is unclear. But what is clear is that Gimlette dropped the ball in not naming it The Thomas instead and saving us all from this brutal centuries-long debate.
Recipe Rationale:
Murrell’s Row Gin Gin: As I’ve mentioned numerous times, Murrell’s Row is my go-to gin. Gin Gin is their version of a London Dry, which is the gin style used most often in modern versions of the Gimlet. Tanqueray or Beefeater would also work. Original recipes called for a Plymouth gin, which is dryer and more botanical, but I stayed with my tried and true Gin Gin .
Fresh Lime Juice: Per my rambles above, original versions used Rose’s Lime Cordial instead of fresh lime juice and simple syrup. The Gimlet recipe of old was a simple 1 part gin to 1 part Rose’s mix. But Rose’s of today is different from Rose’s of the 19th century, so it looks like most modern recipes forgo it for fresh juice. Make sure you squeeze your own juice, though, or else you might as well go with Rose’s.
Simple Syrup: I made a simple, simple syrup recipe that’s merely one cup of sugar and one cup of water. Here’s the recipe from my previous Whiskey Sour post.
Verdict:
“Currently on meds. Didn’t try this one.”
Sab
“The proportions of lime juice and simple syrup felt very balanced, leaning a little more towards the lime and keeping the drink from being overly sweet. Felt right. Both the lime and sugar took a step back, though, to let the gin really shine through as the main character while the lime played quite nicely with the gin botanicals in the background. Overall impression was that it was a gin-forward, slightly boozy, yet still refreshing drink. I enjoyed it even though I don’t think I love the combination of gin and citrus as much as, say, gin and vermouth or gin and Campari or gin and gin.”
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