How to Make a Gin, Ginger & Raspberry Cocktail

It’s interesting to wonder how many of the great drinks of history were created to impress a girl. The White Lady? The Pink Lady? Perhaps. And then there’s a drink like the Floradora, for which we know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, precisely why it was made: The Floradora is as close to a Love Potion No. 9 as the barmen of the early 1900s could muster. It is a cocktail as thematically aligned as any in existence—a beautiful drink, inspired by a beautiful word, designed specifically to impress a beautiful woman.

But let’s back up. Before the Floradora was a drink, it was a musical. It was a smash hit in London in 1899, and an even bigger hit on Broadway the next year. The plot, like many Edwardian musical comedies, is hopelessly convoluted and utterly irrelevant, but all we need to know here is that it featured a fictional tropical island called Florodora, on which there is a flower called Florodora used in the production of a perfume called Florodora, a whole supply chain compressed into a single pretty word. Then there were the girls—“English Girls” in the script, but known broadly as the Florodora Girls—a featured chorus sextette, again unnecessary to the actual plot, but widely understood as the primary reason for the show’s popularity. As one historian put it, the girls “swished onto the stage and captivated New York for no other reason than they were utterly stunning.”

This is not hyperbole. Florodora ran for 552 performances, at the time the third-most successful Broadway run ever, and you can’t find a single bit of information about it that doesn’t mention the chorus line women and their arresting beauty. There were six original Florodora Girls, all of whom quickly became famous. Wealthy men, ensorcelled by their onstage charm, would track down these beautiful strangers and propose marriage—at least three, and reportedly all six, would acquiesce and need to be replaced. They were, in short, a sensation.

So one night in 1901, the Florodora Girls were out on the town after a show. One of them, named Susie Drake, began refusing to drink anything but lemonade unless it was “something brand new,” made just for her, so the closest barman, Jimmy O’Brien, jumped to the task. He combined some fresh raspberries with lime, the best ginger ale he could muster and enough gin to “catch the taste,” and gave it to her. One can only imagine his bated breath as she took that first tentative sip of this florid red drink, and, as she happily approved of it, he named it the only thing he could: The Florodora.

There were a few contemporaneous newspaper articles, but the cocktail graduates to books in 1913, in Straub’s Manual of Mixed Drinks, where Jacques Straub spells it “Floradora” as opposed to “Florodora,” a copyediting mistake that has etched itself into the canon, and so it is—a tall and refreshing combination of gin, raspberry, lime, and ginger ale is a Floradora.

For all of its massive successes, and for all of the fame, money, and love generated by this Broadway juggernaut, 125 years later the biggest lasting impact of Florodora is this spicy and fruity little cocktail, created for one particular girl in a particularly imperious mood. The Floradora is a drink of contrasts—bright fruit and spicy ginger, tall and refreshing but plenty strong—a lovely way to welcome in the warm glow of summer, and perhaps get a beautiful stranger to marry you while you’re at it. 

Floradora

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake hard on ice. Strain into a tall glass, and top with soda water. Garnish with a lime wheel or raspberries or both.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Gin: Like the wonderful Clover Club, raspberries have a heedless love for rose water, and that means Hendrick’s Gin. That said—depending on how spicy you want your ginger syrup to be (see below), it may not matter. The spicier the ginger, the less the delicate nuances of the particular gin choice really matter.

Ginger Syrup: This is the big choice. Ginger syrup is a pain in the butt, and it’s not strictly speaking necessary, but if you like that spicy kick, there’s no substitute. To make it, there’s a few ways, depending on your equipment:

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Ginger Ale/Ginger Beer: If you don’t want to engage with the ginger syrup, no problem, this drink is still very much worth making—get the spiciest ginger beer you can find (I like Blenheim Ginger Ale, Cock n’ Bull Ginger Beer, or even Bundaberg) and reduce the lime to 0.5 oz. Shake the gin, lime, and raspberries, then strain it and top with ginger beer, to taste.