Stirred Up Stories: The Tom Collins – Who Was Tom Collins Anyway?
The Tom Collins has one of the best names in cocktail history. It sounds like a real person. You can almost picture him sitting at the end of a bar, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, waiting for someone to ask what he is drinking.
The funny thing is that Tom Collins may never have been a real person at all. The cocktail is closely connected to an elaborate practical joke that swept through New York and other American cities in the 1870s.
The Tom Collins hoax involved telling someone that a man called Tom Collins had been saying terrible things about them in a nearby bar. The victim would rush off looking for this mysterious Tom, only to discover that the whole thing had been a joke. The story became so widespread that newspapers started reporting on the craze.
From prank to cocktail
Around the same period, recipes for a Tom Collins began appearing in bartender's guides. Jerry Thomas's 1876 edition included a recipe using Old Tom gin, lemon juice, sugar and soda water.
Old Tom gin is important to the story. It sits somewhere between the heavier sweetness of Dutch-style genever and the drier London Dry style that later became dominant. That slightly sweeter gin worked beautifully with lemon and soda.
Making a Tom Collins
For a modern version, use 45ml gin, 30ml fresh lemon juice and 15ml simple syrup. Shake those ingredients with ice, strain into a tall glass filled with fresh ice and top with around 60–90ml soda water.
Give it a gentle stir and finish with a lemon wheel and, if you like, a cherry. The result should be long, cold, fizzy and refreshing.
What makes it different?
The Tom Collins is basically a sour that has been lengthened with soda. That extra fizz completely changes the experience. Instead of the concentrated punch of a Whiskey Sour or Daiquiri, you get something lighter and more refreshing.
You can also play around with the gin. A citrus-forward gin will emphasise the lemon, while a more juniper-heavy bottle gives the drink a classic dry character. If you can find an Old Tom gin, it is worth trying for a taste closer to the drink's historical roots.
Why It Works
There is no mystery to the formula: spirit, sour, sweet and bubbles. But sometimes simple formulas are simple because they work. The Tom Collins is particularly good on a warm day when you want something refreshing without losing the character of the spirit.
And then there is the name. Even if Tom Collins himself was fictional, he has had a pretty successful career. More than a century after the prank that helped popularise his name, people are still ordering him at bars around the world.
Sometimes the best cocktail stories start with somebody having a laugh!
Slán go fóill.
