Tom Collins
ClassicIBA OfficialGin, lemon, and soda. The original tall cooler.
Bright, crisp, and lightly sweet. Fresh lemon and gin's botanicals lead, a measure of sugar rounds the edges, and soda water lifts it into something long and sparkling. Clean and citrusy, with a dry botanical finish — a lemonade for grown-ups.
Ingredients
- 2 oz London Dry Gin
- 1 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- 0.5 oz Simple Syrup
- Soda Water to top
- Lemon wheel · optional garnish
- Maraschino cherry · optional garnish
Method
- 1
Add the gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup to a shaker with ice.
- 2
Shake until chilled.
- 3
Strain into an ice-filled highball glass and top with soda water.
- 4
Garnish with a lemon wheel and a maraschino cherry.
The Story
The Tom Collins is a gin sour stretched tall and given bubbles. It surfaced in the 1870s — riding, oddly, on a running practical joke about a fictitious man named Tom Collins that swept New York bars — and quickly settled into a genuine classic. Built on Old Tom gin originally, it is the template for the whole "Collins" family: spirit, citrus, sugar, soda, served long over ice. Simple, cold, and eternally refreshing.
Recipe card
The whole recipe in one shareable image.
