Gimlet – Recipe from Harry Craddock’s ‘Savoy Guide’

½ Plymouth Gin

½ Roses Lime Cordial

Gimlet – Recipe from David Embury’s ‘The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks’

The Gimlet is a Gin Rickey and is made with sugar, lime juice, gin and carbonated water

No David, no it isn’t.

When I first started bartending in New Zealand in 1992 our post work drink was a ‘Stoli and Orange’, this slowly turned into a drink called the ‘42’ and was consumed in great numbers by anyone who worked in a bar in Auckland. Apparently one day a bartender who used to work at DeBretts on High Street stopped back in one day for a drink, he ordered a vodka gimlet from the bartender who couldn’t find it on the till, the drinker knew the product code, 42, and ordered it for the rest of the night using that name, conveniently the drink was also served 4 parts vodka and 2 parts lime cordial and the name stuck. Now this was a vodka gimlet, not the classic gin version, but the idea of a gimlet has always appealed to me because of this variation.

The history of the original gimlet is a little murky, I think it first appears in the Savoy Guide, hence the shout out above, the story is that it was invented ship-side after Lachlan Rose invented Roses Lime Cordial as a preserved means of combating scurvy on long voyages, and that mixing it with gin was a way of downing this, and its named after a gimlet spike, a sharp little tool for drilling holes in wood, just like the beverage could be used to make holes in your liver, stamina or mental acuity.