“…four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice. Gatsby took up his drink. ‘They certainly look cool,’ [Gatsby] said with visible tension. We drank in long, greedy swallows.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby.
Does anybody know how many long, greedy swallows of gin rickeys it takes before you look like Robert Redford or Leonardo DiCaprio? Or even how many it takes before you think you do?
On February 21, I (and I hope you) may find out.
The gin rickey, like the fizz and the collins, is a bit of a lost drink. Lost but not forgotten. At least to me. It was the drink of my youth. The drink that gave me the courage to ask Roxy Kowalchuk to dance. The drink that, after sharing it with Roxy, influenced her to kiss me before I had to make a fumbling effort. One of the drinks that held out its hand and welcomed me to the world of alcohol.
Pure and simple, The Great Gatsby is a great American novel. And the gin rickey is a great American drink.
The drink’s beginnings were in Washington, DC., circa 1883, at Shoomaker’s Bar. It’s name comes from Democratic lobbyist Colonel Joe Rickey, a fixture at Shoomaker’s.
The first recipe I could find for the rickey was in the 1903 edition of Daly’s Bartenders’ Encyclopedia:
GIN RICKEY. Use a sour glass. Squeeze the juice of one lime into it. 1 small lump of ice. 1 wine glass of Plymouth gin. Fill the glass with syphon seltzer, and serve with small bar spoon.
Things haven’t changed much in the last century. Some might argue that the amount of gin be reduced. Some might argue that half a lime is sufficient. Many will argue for their personal choice of gin (I’m a Tanqueray man). But what makes the drink special is not what’s in the drink but what’s not. Like virtually all of the cocktails that I’ve enlisted in my army, a gin rickey contains no sugar.
Following its popularity in Washington, the gin rickey craze washed across America and, in 1907, a piece headlined “Limes are on Time” appeared in the Los Angeles Herald:
Now let the warm weather come and let the siphons hiss, because the limes are here ready for the gin rickeys. Three hundred cases of rickeys, or to be more explicit, 2,000,000 junior lemons—for, to be sure, they lacked the carbonic water and gin—arrived today from the West Indies on the steamship Pretoria.
The drinks popularity continued through the roaring twenties, into the bathtub era, and on into the war years.
The song Jukebox Saturday Night, made famous by Glenn Miller, the man whose music my mother says I was conceived to, also helped popularize gin rickeys (though I’ve always hoped the conception took place to Moonlight Serenade and not to these words).
Mopping up sodapop rickeys
To our heart’s delight
Dancing to swingeroo quickies
Jukebox Saturday night
It will be the roaring twenties I’ll be honoring on February 21. Along with a very special charity. And when I drink my gin rickeys, I will toast the fine work the charity does.
The event is called The Great Gatsby: A Taste of the Roaring Twenties. The venue is the Rosewood Hotel. The date is February 21. The start time is 2:00 pm. The fine charity we’ll be honoring and helping is Feed The Hungry San Miguel. And not only do you help the charity, you get to dine and dance and, maybe, drink gin rickeys.
OK, back to that original question about how many gin rickeys. How about if I changed the question to how many gin rickeys do I have to drink to look like the guy who played Tom Buchanan in the Redford version of the movie? In other words, how many gin rickeys does it take to look like Bruce Dern? Apparently, according to Don Day’s Wife, none. You just muss up your hair and growl in a whiny voice.
But I’m still having at least two.
For more information and tickets to the gala, you can go to feedthehungrysma.org.
Recent Comments