3-Ingredient Cocktails

by Robert Simonson

  Brandy Fix

  Fixes were a style of drink exceedingly popular in the nineteenth century. They are so enjoyable and easy to manage that it’s a bit of a mystery that, even in today’s historically minded cocktail era, they remain rather obscure and hard to find at bars. (The late Sasha Petraske, of Milk & Honey fame, was a master at the fix.) A fix is basically a sour served on crushed ice and sometimes adorned with an elaborate garnish. I don’t really care about the latter aspect. But the former alteration adds significant allure. The recipe here is for brandy, but the formula works with just about any spirit you care to try. Fixes can get more complex than this, but not necessarily any better.

  2 ounces cognac

  ¾ ounce lemon juice

  ¾ ounce rich simple syrup (2:1) (this page)

  Lemon wedge

  Combine all the ingredients except the lemon wedge in a cocktail shaker and dry shake (no ice) for about 15 seconds. Strain into a double Old-Fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a lemon wedge. Serve with a straw.

  CAIPIRINHA

  You don’t have to dig too deeply into Brazilian drinking habits before you bump into the Caipirinha. Actually, you’ll probably run up against it first thing. It’s Brazil’s national cocktail and is made with the country’s most common and popular indigenous spirit: cachaça. Cachaça is a rumlike distillate. Just don’t call it “Brazilian rum” in the presence of any cachaça makers or Brazilian patriots unless you want to start an argument. The country lobbied hard to get the American government to recognize the spirit as a distinct product native to Brazil.

  The Caipirinha isn’t too far removed from its warm-weather drinking buddies, the Margarita, Ti’ Punch, and Daiquiri. All share the tropical trinity of sugar, lime juice, and spirit. In the Caipirinha’s case, the lime isn’t juiced, but remains relatively intact. A half of a lime, cut into wedges, is muddled with sugar at the bottom of a rocks glass and then topped with cachaça and ice. It’s a simple drink—as behooves a refreshment that was born in Brazil’s rural hinterlands—even if it does require a little elbow grease.

  Americans first began to see the Caipirinha pop up at bars in the 1990s, hot off the heels of the mojito craze, another equatorial drink that involves muddling—in the mojito’s case, mint.

  However, cachaça’s fortunes in the States have changed significantly since the dawn of the new century. Before then, most of the cachaça exported from Brazil was of the industrial sort—rough stuff. Lately, a bunch of artisanal brands have begun to export abroad, including cachaças made from pot stills and cachaças aged in barrels made from all sorts of wood.

  In this brave new world of wide cachaça choice, the tried and true Caipirinha can be both a boon and a burden to advocates of the spirit. The Caipirinha remains the cocktail most closely associated with cachaça. It gets drinkers in the door, but often they don’t venture beyond the vestibule. Despite the valiant efforts of mixologists, cachaça has a very narrow user profile. Few liquors are so tied in the consumers’ mind to a single cocktail.

  Still, there are worse headaches to have. Tequila and Pisco struggle with the same problem, vis-à-vis the Margarita and Pisco Sour. And, you know what? They’ll be fine. Those spirits will be just fine.

  Moreover, all those wonderful, artisanal cachaças may be of little use to the Caipirinha. The drink shares something with the Manhattan in that some think the best versions of the drink are made with run-of-the-mill product. This rule of thumb goes, “The worse the cachaça, the better the Caipirinha.”

  Caipirinha

  Lime quality can mean a lot with this drink. Look for a ripe lime with good flesh; a dry, juiceless fruit will not do the job. There are many good cachaça brands on the market now. Leblon and Novo Fogo are two.

  2 ounces cachaça

  2 bar spoons sugar

  ½ lime, cut into quarters

  In a double Old-Fashioned glass, gently muddle the sugar and lime wedges. Add the cachaça and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds.

  Jackson Cannon’s Jack Rose

  This is one of the best known of the apple brandy cocktails. The argument as to whether it’s shown to best advantage with lemon juice or lime never seems to end. This recipe (and the formula for the grenadine) belong to Jackson Cannon, a Boston bartender who made this drink his calling card at the bar and restaurant Eastern Standard. He did well.

  2 ounces Laird’s Bonded Applejack

  ¾ ounce lemon juice

  ¾ ounce grenadine (this page)

  Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until chilled, about 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe.

  Highballs

  This class of mixed drinks is typically simple, composed of two or (in the case of this book) three ingredients, only one of them usually being spirit, and served in its eponymous glass, often over ice. They have a well-deserved reputation for being refreshing.

  GIN AND TONIC

  Creative was on vacation when this classic got its name. That sometimes happens when it comes to highballs. “This and That” is as good a name as any. And “Gin and Tonic” is as utilitarian as they come.

  The name makes sense when you consider the drink’s origins. The two ingredients—gin and quinine—were forced into a shotgun marriage by British military in India trying to ward off malaria. Quinine, which is derived from cinchona tree bark, works against malaria just fine but doesn’t taste very good by itself. That’s where the gin came in (plus some sugar, water, and citrus). Eventually, the Brits just plain liked the drink on its own merits, regardless of its healthful qualities. Commercially produced tonic water pounced upon the drink’s popularity by the late 1800s.

  The Gin and Tonic remained a British thing until after World War II, when it began to take hold in America, mainly because tonic water finally became widely available. Throughout the Eisenhower years, it was all the rage in the WASP-ish circles along the Atlantic seaboard. By 1954, the drink was so familiar to the public that the New York Times, in a profile of actor Art Carney, felt comfortable in characterizing him as the tonic to Jackie Gleason’s gin.

  It’s reputation as a summer drink was established early on and has never really let up. When the white pants come out of the closet, so does the tonic come down from the shelf.

  While ubiquitous and widely consumed, the drink got a rather bad name in the late twentieth century. Because it was so easy to make, bartenders made it with ease, too much ease: tonic water out of a soda gun, desiccated lime wedges, and lousy ice. The next century saw more conscientious efforts to build the drink properly, as well as the arrival of better, artisanal tonic waters that weren’t as sweet as the mainstream brands and tasted worlds better.

  Back to the name. It’s called a Gin and Tonic, sure. But that’s never been the whole story. It’s Gin and Tonic and Lime. Or Gin and Tonic and Lemon, if you like. For those citrus wedges aren’t just garnishes. They’re part of the whole deal. The drink isn’t the drink without them. It’s just, well, some gin and some tonic in a glass. It’s not a Gin and Tonic.

  Talk to the Spanish and they’ll tell you that not even a lemon and a lime combined is sufficient garnish. Over the past couple decades, the Iberian Peninsula has made the drink its own in such a way as to make the British seem like pikers. If Americans are all Norman Rockwell about the drink, the Spanish are more like Salvador Dalí. Out with the highball, in with the goblet. They need that roomy goblet to fit in all the fruits and herbs they throw into the glass. The over-the-top garnishes in a Spanish “Gin Tonic,” as they call it, wouldn’t look out of place on a front door during the holiday season—rosemary, tarragon, mint, lavender, thyme, basil, you name it. As for the liquid, if you’ve got a gin, they’re willing to give it a try. Same with tonic water. And on and on, in endless combinations, each pairing carefully, or at least imaginatively, thought out. (The Germans have recently become similarly mix-’em-match-’em-collect-’em-all in their Gin and Toni
c consumption.)

  Once indoctrinated into the Spanish way of the G and T, it can be hard to go back to the somewhat stodgy Anglo-American model. A bulbous and beautiful Gin Tonic crowned with a headdress of botanicals does have a certain Carmen Miranda swagger. But the original model, brisk and brittle, tangy and bright, shouldn’t be underestimated. And there’s something a little backasswards about taking such a simple drink and making it labor-intensive. You can almost imagine a British officer sniffing, “Well, if it takes that much effort to save a man’s life…”

  Gin and Tonic

  Many gins function well in this very forgiving drink. Of course, some work better than others. Among classic London drys, I like Beefeater, Tanqueray, Bombay (not Sapphire), and the overproof Gordon’s, if you can find it. Among modern gins, Ford’s gin, J. Rieger Midwestern dry gin, and Dorothy Parker American gin are good. If you want a savory, Spanish-style G and T, Gin Mare is excellent. For tonics, avoid the mass-market brands like Schweppes and Seagram’s. Craft brands like Fever Tree and Q are miles better. Some prefer a lemon wedge in this drink.

  1½ ounces London dry gin

  2 to 4 ounces tonic water

  Lime wedge

  Pour the gin into a highball glass. Fill the glass with ice, top with tonic water, and stir briefly. Squeeze the lime wedge over the drink and drop into the glass.

  Cuba Libre

  That’s fancy talk for Rum and Coke. But, seriously, there is a difference; the addition of the lime juice makes for a huge assist in stiffening the drink’s backbone. For rum, go with your tastes, anything from a white rum to a lightly aged one; some dark rums even work. For the Coke, find a bottle of the Mexican variety that contains cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

  2 ounces rum

  ½ lime

  4 ounces Mexican Coca-Cola

  Lime wheel

  Fill a highball glass with ice. Squeeze half a lime over the ice, add the rum, and top with the Coca-Cola. Stir briefly and then garnish with the lime wheel.

  Fumata Bianca

  TIMOTHY MINER, 2016

  This is a soft, yet edgy mixture of sweet, herbal, and smoky that goes down easy, despite the challenging flavors involved.

  1 ounce Carpano Bianco

  1 ounce Suze

  ½ ounce Del Maguey Vida mescal

  Club soda

  Grapefruit twist

  Combine all the ingredients except the club soda and the grapefruit twist in a collins glass. Add ice and top with club soda. Express a grapefruit twist over the drink and drop into the glass.

  DARK ’N’ STORMY

  Banging away at a typewriter atop his doghouse, Snoopy began many a literary effort with the hackneyed phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night…” The joke was that, for all his lofty aspirations and put-on airs, Snoopy’s work wasn’t terribly inspired. (As one scholar of the comic strip observed, Snoopy’s tragedy is that he wakes up every morning just to realize that he is only a dog.)

  This drink’s a bit like that. The name promises all sorts of drama and excitement, but the reality of the experience is pretty tame and predictable. We all kind of know where dark rum and lime and ginger beer are going to get us, don’t we?

  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t good drinking to be had here. The secret to the success of this drink is its rude depth of flavor. You want that rum funky and murky. You want that ginger beer spicy. And just let limes be limes, because that’s usually more than enough.

  The drink has roots in Bermuda, which is the home of Goslings, the dark rum closely associated with the highball. The company has made a nuisance of itself by enforcing a trademark on the drink’s name, an act of corporate aggression that makes the tradition of using Goslings in a Dark ’n’ Stormy less fun than it might otherwise be. Drinkers don’t like rules; that’s why they drink.

  If you want to go all in on the Bermuda thing, find Barritt’s Stone Ginger Beer, which has been made on the island nearly as long as Goslings rum. (Goslings also makes its own ginger beer.) And if you want to be even more purist about it, omit the lime juice. Bermudans never make the drink with lime; that was an American addition and, I believe, an improvement.

  Unsurprisingly for the drink born on an island, it was first associated with the sailing set. It didn’t really start to land on many United States cocktail menus until the 1990s. But it’s come into its own over the past decade or two. Today, it’s drunk by all sorts of landlubbers, in coastal and land-locked states alike.

  Dark ’n’ Stormy

  For rum, start with Goslings and see how you like it. If you’d like to move on, there are other fine dark rums out there. Just watch out for the Cocktail Police. They’ll be the ones wearing Bermuda shorts.

  2 ounces dark rum

  ½ ounce lime juice

  3 ounces ginger beer

  Combine the rum and lime juice in a collins glass filled with ice. Top with ginger beer and stir briefly.

  MOSCOW MULE

  Most cocktails are unselfish creations. Yes, there is commerce involved. Drinks are, of course, bought and sold every waking day. Still, the majority of mixtures were born out of no motivation more complicated than to deliver pleasure and good cheer to weary men and women.

  The Moscow Mule—one of the oldest of the great vodka cocktails—has always had the whiff of entrepreneurship about it, of larger forces putting something over on the guileless public. It is the cocktail as capitalism, the liquid equivalent of a back-room political deal.

  The potion was the fruit of three businesspeople trying, in the early 1940s, to unload three different things that nobody wanted. There was John G. Martin, president of Heublein, Inc., who was trying to cajole Americans to drink his strange and obscure Russian product, Smirnoff vodka. He met up with Jack Morgan, owner of the Cock ’n’ Bull on the Sunset Strip, who made a ginger beer in which drinkers were equally uninterested. In some versions of the story, there’s a third purveyor of unwanted goods—copper mugs—on hand, but this part of the story has been more difficult to confirm. Bing, bang, boom, and a lime or two—the Moscow Mule was born and took off among the Hollywood crowd. By 1946, the drink was already in the Stork Club cocktail book and, two years later, in David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.

  The Moscow Mule’s initial zenith was pretty brief. By the 1970s, like a lot of once-famous cocktails, it had been largely forgotten and was seldom made until some cocktail scholars began digging into the history of the drink in the early years of the twenty-first century. Young buck mixologists didn’t pay much mind; they were too busy rediscovering rye and mezcal and other bold-tasting liquids. They couldn’t be bothered with a drink made with the ubiquitous spirit they considered antithetical to their efforts.

  But vodka companies, looking for a historical foothold in the burgeoning cocktail scene, took note. And so the drink’s great second coming began, yet another triumph of capitalism. Vodka reps arrived at bars with boxes of custom-made copper mugs and cases of ginger beer. And if the snootier cocktail bars motioned for the reps to move along, there were plenty of other bars that happily signed up. By the 2010s, the drink was everywhere, nearly as popular as the Bloody Mary or mojito. Eventually, some of the better bars gave in, because there was always going to be a customer asking for a vodka cocktail and better to offer one with a little bit of pedigree than not.

  More than any other drink in this book, you need the proper vessel here or don’t bother. The mug makes this drink. Always has. Without that glistening copper, the cocktail is robbed of all circumstance and excitement.

  Moscow Mule

  A fancy, top-shelf vodka will not improve this drink; workhorses like Smirnoff and Stoli will do just fine (and, if you go with Smirnoff, you’re being historically accurate). A more important factor here is the ginger beer. Try to use a pungent brand with a lot of kick. The drink is called a mule, after all. Fever Tree makes a good version.

  2 ounces vodka

  ½ ounce lime juice

  4 ounces ginger beer


  Lime wedge

  Combine the vodka and lime juice in a copper mug filled with crushed ice, top with ginger beer. Garnish with a lime wedge.

  Mamie Taylor

  This Scotch-based predecessor of the Moscow Mule appeared in the early years of the twentieth century and was possibly an inspiration. For those who find the Moscow Mule somewhat lacking in character, give this competitor a shot.

  2 ounces blended Scotch

  ½ ounce lime juice

  4 ounces ginger beer

  Combine the Scotch and lime juice in a collins glass filled with ice. Top with ginger beer and stir briefly.

  HARVEY WALLBANGER

  The Harvey Wallbanger is the three-ingredient, fluke colossus that conquered the 1970s. Its reign was intentional, and the campaign was premeditated. If you want to know who was behind the plot, just look at the ingredients: one of these things is not like the others. The vodka and orange juice industries were doing just fine as the “Me Decade” dawned. But Galliano—that yellow stuff from Italy in the ridiculously long bottle—didn’t have much of a foothold on American backbars. Ads in the 1960s showed outsized bottles of the stuff posed alongside various Roman ruins. It wasn’t working.