How to Make the Season’s Best Drinks

The turn of the millennium is when vodka was at the apex of its cultural power. Vodka had overtaken gin in popularity by 1967, but by 2000 had fully usurped it, like Claudius to King Hamlet—occupied its position, married its wife, and taken control of its lands. Cocktails like the Gimlet that had long been understood as gin stalwarts were treated as vodka drinks by default. This happened over and over: Vodka French 75s. Vodka tonics. Vodka Collins’. Even the mighty Martini, gin’s seemingly impenetrable fortress, was so conquered by vodka that it was then (and still for many is today) a surprising piece of trivia that the Martini was exclusively a gin drink for the first 50 years of its life.

This is when Audrey Saunders turned back the tides of time. Saunders was one of the earliest and most talented leaders of the mixology renaissance and in 2000 was working at a place called Beacon and had begun to see gin as something of a cause. She wanted to make the best tasting drinks she could, and a lot of times, that means gin, as it’s a spirit truly built for cocktails.

Inspired by a proper Mojito, she recruited fresh mint, which harmonizes with gin’s inherent herbaceousness. Lime and simple syrup echoed the satisfying push and pull of a proper Gimlet, and a splash of homemade ginger beer gave a spice that lingers on the palate, a compelling closing argument for cocktails with fresh ingredients. It was, of course, a hit. She took it with her from bar to bar until she opened her own, the revolutionary Pegu Club, in 2005, where the Gin-Gin Mule was on the opening menu. It converted vodka-philes by the legion, which was good because when Pegu Club opened, there wasn’t a bottle of vodka in the building. 

Add mint, gin, lime, and ginger syrup to a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake good and hard for six to eight seconds. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice, top with soda, and garnish with a mint sprig.

What is a Stork Club like? It is orange juice in a tuxedo. It is juicy and refreshing, lightly tart and gently strong. The cocktail world is full of orange juice cocktails for whom you need to offer excuses: The dated Bronx, the goofy Harvey Wallbanger, the bizarre Blood and Sand, the useless Screwdriver, each with a specific reason for existing, but each limited in their own way. The Stork Club on the other hand, when properly assembled, is at the grown up table, a cocktail featuring that most summery and charming of citrus fruits in a way that doesn’t remind you of a sepia photographs or Formica countertops.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake good and hard for eight to 10 seconds and strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange peel.

The Enzoni is a phenomenal little drink, a true banger when the sun comes out. It’s bright and refreshing, bitter and sweet, but its unique gift is its irrepressible juicy exuberance. The aforementioned illusion about grapes is that they should be in everything; they shouldn’t. Grapes are surprisingly subtle in a cocktail—they don’t offer flavor as much as they give the cocktail shape and a broad refreshing quality, disappearing behind the other ingredients, and in the balance tend to add a layer of noise that distracts from the clarity of what you’re trying to achieve. In other words, they’re not bold enough to be the main character, but too present to completely blend in. The reason the Enzoni is so special is that it has plenty of boldness, but what it doesn’t have is the right shape. It needs the grapes. 

Add grapes to a cocktail shaker and briefly smash with a muddler or something blunt—you’re looking to break the skins and press fruit, not pulverize it into jelly. Add liquids and ice, seal the shaker and shake hard for six to eight seconds. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass and garnish with some more grapes on a pick and, if you feel like it, an orange slice.

The Army & Navy, we know now, is a gin sour—a stout pour of gin with fresh lemon juice, whose acidity is balanced by the sweet almond syrup orgeat, and spiced with a couple dashes of Angostura Bitters. The orgeat adds a creamy texture while obviously avoiding cream, the cocktail remaining tart and bright, lightly piney and lightly floral, and to me reminds me of nothing so much as the first budding of the season, which makes it perfect for these nascent days of spring.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, add ice, and shake good and hard for eight to 10 seconds. Strain up into a cocktail glass or coupe, and garnish with a lemon peel or lemon wheel, or nothing at all.

Bartender Andrew Rice of N.Y.C.’s Attaboy took the template of a Tom Collins—gin, lemon juice, sugar, and soda, itself foundationally refreshing and the original summer banger—and twisted it in two delicious ways. The first was replacing half the gin with fino sherry, the delicate, slightly nutty fortified wine from Spain, which has the dual benefits of lowering the proof and adding a subtle complexity. To complement this, Rice also spiced the whole thing with a dash of absinthe, whose botanical intensity compensates for the sherry’s relative lack of weight. What all of this means together is that the Fort Tilden Cooler is an ice cold and viscerally refreshing charmer, a low-ABV drink that doesn’t taste low-ABV so much as it just tastes crushable. 

Add all liquids except for the soda water to a cocktail shaker with ice. Seal and shake hard for eight to 10 seconds. Strain over fresh ice into a collins glass, top with soda, and garnish with a grapefruit peel.

The Bramble is a vibe. As the days get longer and the sun gains strength, cocktails like the Bramble float back into our minds, as if compelled by the season. English bartending legend Dick Bradsell invented this charmer back in the 1980s, inspired, he would later explain, “by the fresh blackberries I used to get on the Isle of Wight.” Tart, bright, and fresh, this is essentially a gin sour with a plush kiss of blackberry liqueur, made extra refreshing by crushed ice.

Add gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup to a shaker with a handful of crushed ice. Shake briefly to aerate and incorporate the ingredients, then dump contents into a rocks glass. Top with more crushed ice, then drizzle the crème de mûre on top. Garnish with a lemon slice and a blackberry.

Sometimes all you want is a vodka soda and that’s great. But there are times when you get stuck in a rut, and that can be true of vodka drinkers who don’t wish to move outside of that comfort zone. But there’s a sure-fire gin cocktail that can shake off the hesitancy over trying a new drink and it’s the Eastside Rickey. The gin, lime, cucumber, and mint cocktail is about as refreshing of an ingredient combination you can find—add to that some soda water for effervescence, and you may never want to go back to your vodka soda again.

Muddle cucumber and mint in the bottom of a shaker tin. Add liquid ingredients and ice, seal and shake hard. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice and top with soda water, and garnish with a mint crown stuck through the middle of a cucumber coin.

The White Lady’s origin story involves a fairly dull dispute and we’ll spare you the details, but the cocktail took its current form in the foundational Savoy Cocktail Book, published in 1930. Within the decade bartenders would start using egg white as well, which is still what most people do today. But the recipe we lean toward is the one offered up legendary Japanese bartender Hidetsugu Ueno, who eschews the egg for his carefully crafted take on the classic.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice, and give it a long, hard shake, about eight to 10 seconds. Strain off the ice into a chilled coupe or Martini glass, and garnish with an orange peel.

Before gin and Champagne ever got involved, the French 75, officially “Matériel de 75 mm Mle 1897,” was a 2,700-lb field gun rolled out by the French to fight WWI. As for the cocktail, made as it originally was—which is to say, a full-strength drink into which was mixed a half glass of wine—the French 75 certainly had the firepower to earn its name. That first reported recipe differs from what you find now. For years the French 75 was served on the rocks in a tall glass, essentially a Tom Collins with the soda water swapped for sparkling wine. The modern incarnation is in a flute, sans the ice. In the video above, we show how to make the two versions of the beloved Champagne cocktail the French 75 and explain the key differences between the two.

Proper French 75

Shake first three ingredients over ice. Strain into a chilled flute, and top with about 3 oz. of chilled Champagne.

Old School French 75

Shake first three ingredients over ice. Strain into a tall glass over ice, and top with about 3 oz. of sparkling wine.

The Bee’s Knees—gin, lemon, and honey—is a simple drink with a rich backstory. It was invented in the Roaring ’20s in Paris by none other than “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, the woman who survived the Titanic sinking and went on to become a leading progressive activist, suffragette, and, eventually, a bon vivant in Paris. We show you how to make the classic below, but the Bee’s Knees is a great starting point for endless variations.

Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice, shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds and strain off the ice into a coupe or Martini glass. Garnish with a lemon peel, a lemon wheel or even nothing at all.

You could spend weeks drinking nothing but different tasty gin sour variations, but personally, we don’t know if you could do better than the Clover Club. Throughout its 120 year history the Clover Club—a gin sour, tarted up with fresh raspberries and smoothed out with an egg white—has been celebrated, then dismissed, then forgotten, and now, finally, is back on top. Find out what it has to do with Oscar Wilde here, or just do what William Butler Yeats did upon discovering it and make three of them all for yourself by the recipe below.

Add all ingredients to a shaker tin. “Dry” shake ingredients without ice for five seconds to whip the egg. Add ice, seal tins and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain into coupe or martini glass, express a lemon peel over the top of the foam for aroma and discard and garnish with one to three raspberries, on a pick.

In his legendary 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, Harry Craddock includes two recipes for Corpse Revivers No. 1, and No. 2. Corpse Reviver No. 1 is essentially a brandy Manhattan that Craddock specifically recommends “before 11 am,” and is so puzzling, so ill-suited to morning drinking, it makes one question the authority of the whole book. Then you turn the page and get to the Corpse Reviver No. 2 and faith is immediately restored, as it is perhaps the best brunch cocktail ever created.

Corpse Reviver No. 2 is equal parts gin, lemon, Cointreau and Lillet Blanc, with a couple dashes of absinthe. It’s tart, bright, juicy and easy, but also somehow simultaneously deep and complex and herbal, the ingredients fitting together tight as a jazz quartet. With Cointreau weighing in at a full 80 proof, it’s deceptively punchy, but not overwhelmingly so. It is one of those drinks that you keep going back to because every sip shows you something new.

Add ingredients to shaker and shake on ice for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain into a stemmed coupe or Martini glass. Garnish with an orange peel.

This equal parts cocktail may knock you on your ass. Invented at the Detroit Athletic Club in 1916, the Last Word was revived in 2003 by legendary Seattle bartender Murray Stenson at the Zig Zag Café. In video above, we show show you how this drink that languished in obscurity for many years because a darling of America’s cocktail revival.

Shake long and hard over ice, 12 to 15 seconds, longer than most drinks—a little added dilution helps this drink be its best self. Strain into a coupe and garnish with a maraschino cherry, a lime wheel, or just nothing at all.

The Gimlet is a classic cocktail that didn’t start behind some fancy bar, but on the high seas. Well, kind of. The British Navy was suffering from scurvy when it ruled the high seas, until Lauchlan Rose found a way to preserve lime with sugar. Rose’s Lime Cordial was born. Sailors could mix Rose’s concoction with their rum ration, but officers required good British gin, and gin with lime cordial is a Gimlet. Despite being a simple two-ingredient cocktail on paper, the right cordial is crucial. You’ll want to throw away that mass-produced Rose’s Lime Juice you’d find today in stores today and opt for one you make yourself. Fortunately, in the video above we show you how to make that cordial and the drink as well.

Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain off the ice either up into a cocktail glass or else onto fresh ice in a rocks glass, and garnish with a lime wheel or peel.

*Lime Cordial

Recipe from jeffreymorgenthaler.com

Zest the lime and put the lime zest into a blender. Juice the zested lime(s) into the blender, then add the sugar, water, and citric acid. After blending on medium speed for 30 seconds, strain with a fine strainer. Bottle and refrigerate or mix a cocktail immediately, if you so choose.

The Tom Collins is one of our foundational drinks, invented sometime in the 19th century (it’s hard to say exactly when) and taking modern form around the time when sparkling water started being widely available. And while it’s a foundational drink in the cocktail canon (enough to have it’s own glass!), it feels like one that’s oft overlooked. But we argue it shouldn’t be. This gin sour lengthened with soda water is a simple yet tasty delight of a drink.

Add gin, lemon, and simple syrup to a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake hard for five to eight seconds. Strain over fresh ice into a tall (Collins) glass, top with soda, and stir briefly to incorporate the soda into the rest of the drink. Garnish with a slice of orange and a cherry, if you have them, or a lemon peel, or honestly nothing at all.