Let's face it, everything is bad. I don’t need to give examples. You know what I mean. There is nothing and no-one we can rely on. Except alcohol.
That’s right, friends! I bring you salvation and succour, in the form of a lime green waterslide of a drink, that will have you swishing and sloshing and whooping all the way through to the next crisis — and beyond. Allow me to present The Gimlet.
Am I advocating that you blot out reality by getting blotto? Don’t be so crass. This is more than just a cocktail. It is a fresh new outlook. It is a civilised state of mind. It is, if you follow me to the very end, a discipline, a physical and mental regimen, that will guide you along a fragrant path to tranquility and sanity.
The basic gimlet, which is the first step on our journey, and the vital intervention to bring you back from the brink, satisfies the two most important criteria of any good cocktail: (1) easy to make, and (2) an impeccable literary pedigree. The second is crucial now more than ever. Amidst the spectre of death and destruction, and the alarm of political instability and the fall of modern civilisation, and heart-rending news of human brutality and injustice — we need the highest moments of our species to rescue us from the lowest. And liquor to calm the nerves.
I first learned of the gimlet from my father-in-law, always an indispensable booze mentor. He sold it on Important Criteria Number One, its simplicity: two parts gin, one part Rose's Lime Juice, shake with ice, pour it out, done. He also maintains that every worthy cocktail is made worthier with the addition of a maraschino cherry, so long as it comes from Luxardo. It is hard to argue.
Are we finished? Oho! Not by a long shot!
This is indeed a very fine drink, and I suggest you make one immediately. For the gin I prefer Bombay Sapphire, but if you must slum it with Gordons or Tanqueray, all power to you, and if you are into those whacky bespoke hipster gins, that's none of my business; we all make mistakes. The cherries are optional, but not the brand. Do not soil your beverage with those flourescent red baubles from factory-made fruit salad. Insist on Luxardo. Amazon have them, and everyone has Amazon, so there are no excuses.
And then there's the Rose's. Now we come to a minor snag, for some at least.
The Rose's sold in the US is not the same as that in the UK, or, I imagine, its ex colonies. The UK recipe is (presumably) close to the original concoction from 1867, invented to preserve scurvy-fighting lime juice for sailors, without the need, ironically, to mix the juice with alcohol. The whole lime juice thing also precipitated the nickname “limeys” for the British, and although I have never heard that term used in the wild, it does sometimes pop up as an insult spoken by Americans in films written by, yet more irony, the British. (For example, A Fish Called Wanda, which I also recommend as an emotional salve.) Anyway, if it ever was used to insult the British, the joke is on America, because US Rose's is nothing but a brutal bath of high fructose corn syrup.
It gets even nastier if you hark back to everyone's favourite definition of the gimlet, from Raymond Chandler's “A Long Goodbye”. On p. 20 of my copy, we find: “A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.” Jesus Christ! Put in an equal measure of Rose's — and American Rose's at that! — and by God you'll have some serious insight into the psychological turmoil of Terry Lennox, the sozzled limey who introduces it to grizzled PI Philip Marlowe.
The best that can be said for all this — don't worry, be patient, we're getting to gimlet nirvana, and I promise you it will be worth it — is that it got me reading Raymond Chandler.
It was not the only nudge in Chandler's direction. He is also cited as an influence on the Coen Brothers' cinematic masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. Joel Coen said, “We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story.... having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant.” Even its detractors agree that they succeeded, or so I am reliably informed; I never deign to speak to such philistines. The film also had a signature drink, and became as associated with the White Russian as The Long Goodbye is with the gimlet.
The film has an exquisite script, and that is the ultimate salute to Chandler. None of us go to Chandler for his plots, and very few for his drink recipes. Even the famous hard-boiled detective pose had become cliched long before Chandler ripped the last sheet from his typewriter. No, we go to Chandler for the prose style. And boy, is it a knock-out! Even after all these years, it still leaps fresh and sharp from his pages. Or should I say sour and sharp, like when you put too much fresh lime juice in your gimlet? Which is, of course, the perfect amount. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
These days Chandler gets a bad rap as a misogynist, and you'll find plenty of that in The Long Goodbye without even looking. If you refuse to drink in homage to a crumbling pillar of the patriarchy, gimlet advocates of modern vintage and flawless fuck-you attitude are easy to find.
For example. In September 2019 Phoebe Waller-Bridge was awarded a bundle of Emmy awards for her TV series Fleabag. Every one of them was thoroughly deserved; Fleabag is by far the most incredible comedy I have watched in many years, if not decades. In customary bad-ass style, Waller-Bridge was photographed languishing with her trophies at a party, smoking a cigarette and drinking — could it really be? — a gimlet! Yes, indeed it was. Confirmation came some months later, in an interview with my favourite intellectual news journal, Vogue. She revealed that she had discovered the gimlet shortly after I did, probably also from my father-in-law. She expressed her devotion almost as well as I would: “I have really always wanted a cocktail that you order with total confidence; you know, that thing that you order and everyone’s like, Holy shit, she knows what she’s doing with her entire life.”
Preach it, sister!
There was also a surprise: hers is a vodka gimlet.
A vodka gimlet? That had not occurred to us, dude. Is the gin-to-vodka swap a showbiz thing? After all, Elton John once tried to sell me on the vodka-and-tonic, in Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
I gave it a try. It was good. In fact, I couldn't really tell the difference. Just to make sure, I tried half-gin and half-vodka. Also fine. It reminded me of Troy Patterson's characteristically fizzy disquisition on the gimlet from 2013 (he became much less fun after joining the New Yorker in 2017), where he claimed that it is the most unscrewuppable of cocktails. This, sadly, is not true. I could take him to several Cardiff bars that would make him spit out his words. But that is yet another argument for the gimlet as ideal cocktail: the best examples you drink will be those you make yourself.
And so back to our real topic, and its perfect construction.
By now the gimlet will be a serious part of your life. You will be fully equipped with a cocktail shaker, a jigger, and a stylish set of coupe glasses. There will be six spare jars of Luxardo cherries in the cupboard.
After the gimlet has spent all this time improving you, it is time for you to return the favour. “Impossible!” you cry. I would have agreed, until the serendipitous summer of 2018, when the UK Rose's factory burned down.
It is now time for you to also acquire a good lime squeezer. If you cannot find one, sometimes they are inexplicably mis-labelled “lemon squeezers”.
You will also need some simple syrup. It is aptly named. Put one cup of sugar in a pot, and one cup of water. Heat it until the sugar has dissolved. Let it cool, and store it in a container in the fridge until you need it. (You can use an old cherry jar.) If you are ever in urgent need of a gimlet, but have run out of simple syrup — believe me, one day it will happen — there is no need to panic. It takes but a moment to prepare a serving size in the microwave (remember, equal parts sugar and water), and it will all be suitably chilled in your cocktail shaker.
If you want to make a pair of gimlets, because they are always better shared, this is what you do:
Put two large measures of gin into your cocktail shaker. Slice in half two limes, and squeeze them into the shaker. No two limes are the same, of course, so each gimlet will be different. I know that surprises are unwelcome in these terrifying times, so I hope you can handle this smidgen of unpredictability. Now put in one large measure of simple syrup. Add some ice, shake it up until the shaker is so frozen cold that you cannot bear to continue holding it, and then pour out the cloudy green elixir into two coupe glasses. Your jar of cherries should be to hand, so that you can use a clean spoon to put a cherry in each glass, plus a dollop of cherry goop for good measure.
And you're done.
If you have so far experienced only the Chandler original, and have quite deservedly savoured every sip, then I envy you this moment.
After your first taste, I think you will agree with me. For the first time in months, or years, or decades, you will utter, “Yes, everything is going to be Ok.”
First published in October 2020 — definitely a time that called for a good drink.
For those who fear that even a gimlet cannot sustain them while they wait for actual new writing from me, fear not, things are brewing. Life has been bonkers for the last month or two, to the point where even the gimlets don’t seem to help, but maybe some writing therapy will. Stay tuned.
Cheers!😎