“A Gimlet is technically lime cordial and gin,” explains Toby Cecchini, owner of Brooklyn’s Long Island Bar. “That is the technical definition—but that is not a great drink.”
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Talia Baiocchi is the founder and editor-in-chief of Punch.
Toby Cecchini is a co-owner of The Long Island Bar in Brooklyn, New York, and the creator of the bar’s house Gimlet, an acclaimed rendition of the drink made with a lime-ginger cordial that’s served on the rocks.
St. John Frizell is the co-owner of Brooklyn’s Sunken Harbor Club and Gage & Tollner. He serves a Gimlet on the rocks at the latter venue.
Haley Traub is the bar manager of Manhattan’s Attaboy and Good Guy’s, two bars specializing in classic cocktail constructions.
As it first appears in writing, in Harry MacElhone’s 1922 book Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails, the Gimlet is indeed just two ingredients: equal parts Plymouth gin and Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial. An earlier recipe in Tom Bullock’s Ideal Bartender (1917) describes a more austere Gimlet-like drink called the Gillette Cocktail, which opts for fresh lime juice and a barspoon of superfine sugar in lieu of Rose’s.
When we went in pursuit of the best expression of the Gimlet at a recent blind tasting, it quickly became clear that the prevailing take on the drink today splits the difference between these two approaches, yielding a cocktail that is firmly in sour territory: It’s gin-forward—but not as dry as Bullock’s take—made with fresh lime juice and a sweetener that is often, but not always, a housemade lime cordial.
This was a departure from the last time we blind-tasted Gimlets, in 2018; several of the recipes submitted then called on Rose’s, representing an allegiance to the technical definition of the drink that has since waned. (Naturally, some ambitious bartenders have taken up the task of creating a better, less artificial clarified lime cordial to take the place of Rose’s.) Today, however, the fresh Gimlet reigns supreme.
“I’ve always thought of the Gimlet as belonging to the shaken category because that’s what guests are expecting—that punch of gin and that punch of fresh citrus,” said Haley Traub, bar manager of New York’s Attaboy and Good Guy’s. To go in search of the best Gimlet, Traub joined me, Cecchini, St. John Frizell (co-owner of Brooklyn’s Gage & Tollner and Sunken Harbor Club) and Punch’s editor-in-chief, Talia Baiocchi. A veteran Long Island Bar bartender, KJ Williams, prepared the drinks to each bartender’s specifications.
That one-two punch Traub was looking for is precisely how the judges described the winning recipe from Milady’s bar manager, Izzy Tulloch. Her Gimlet calls on two ounces of Tanqueray No. 10 gin as the base, paired with three-quarters of an ounce each of simple syrup and lime juice, shaken with a lime wheel in the tin to release the oils from the skin in a method akin to the regal shake. Like each of the submitted recipes, the drink was served up, not on the rocks. “This is the only one that has had the gin punch that I’ve wanted,” said Traub, who described its profile as “clean, with no off-flavors.” Frizell concurred. “It has what we’re looking for: a solid punch of gin with a limey thing to it.”
Second place went to Kim Vo of Baltimore’s Dutch Courage. Her recipe uses one and a half ounces of Hayman’s navy-strength gin, an ounce of fresh lime juice and half an ounce of rich simple syrup. Vo also garnishes the drink with an expressed lime twist, resulting in a drink that Cecchini described as “aromatically the most fetching.”
Third place went to Tom Macy, who took top honors at our last Gimlet blind tasting. His recipe similarly approximates the regal shake by including a quarter of a lime (cut into eighths) in the shaking tin along with two ounces of Tanqueray gin, half an ounce of lime juice and three-quarters of an ounce of simple syrup.
Across the three winners, lime cordial is entirely absent, despite appearing in half of the submitted recipes—further proof that we are living in the age of the fresh Gimlet. As Cecchini says, you can call a drink with gin and lime cordial a Gimlet, “but it’s like a two-legged stool—it’s hard to find balance.”