MIXOLOGY

The Gimlet

BY Dave McGinn

Spring is the season for drinking, and yet so many spring cocktails are awful. They’re too sugary or made with syrups. They have embarrassing names created, one guesses, to amuse teenagers: sex on the beach, Alabama slammer, Harvey Wallbanger, etc. They are served in gaudy glassware or are garnished with a giant slab of pineapple.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one to deny the pleasures of a cold beer on a hot day after mowing the lawn or an icy gin and tonic before dinner. But these aren’t spring drinks per se; they simply benefit from temperature contrast. The person who arrives on a patio on a warm and sunny afternoon with a thirst for something new should be rewarded with something more than a drink designed to amuse 15-year-olds. That person should try a gimlet, the greatest spring cocktail of all time. A simple but perfect mix of gin and Rose’s Lime Cordial, a gimlet is for savouring. “You can drink them way too quickly,” says Christine Sismondo, author of Mondo Cocktail.

Indeed, the bite of the gin is perfectly balanced by the tartness of the lime juice, the two combining to make an ideally refreshing drink on a warm day. Like anyone who drinks more than two at a sitting, the cocktail’s origins are a tad hazy. The most oft-cited story has it that Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette, a British naval surgeon, created the drink in the late 19th century so that sailors would not get scurvy. (Limes and other citrus fruit were used by the Royal Navy for the treatment of scurvy—the gin was added for taste.)

A more contentious matter is the question of the proper way to make one. This was certainly a sticking point with novelist Raymond Chandler, a gimlet connoisseur who is rumoured to have bought his lime cordial by the case. In his 1953 novel The Long Goodbye, Chandler’s fictional detective Philip Marlowe and the playboy Terry Lennox spend several afternoons in a bar rhapsodizing over gimlets and the right recipe for them. “A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow,” says Lennox. Others believe the recipe should be three parts gin to one part Rose’s.

And it’s hard to argue with those who believe the best gimlet is made with freshly squeezed limes. I’ve always preferred mine this way: Take a highball glass and fill it with ice, add two shots of gin and top with Rose’s. Of course, make yours to taste. It’s your cocktail, after all.