Collins

Rye and tea with coconut cream and amaro. Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, star anise, or whatever says autumn to you goes into the infusion.

A week of maceration lets the berries ferment slightly, which adds a pleasant funk without reaching for another spirit.

A tiki drink wearing a gin suit. Eight ingredients, and every one earns its place.

Audrey Saunders built it to convert vodka drinkers to gin. It worked, and the variations never stopped.

A gin distilled with nori and lemongrass. Briny and coastal, and the Collins format keeps it long.

Orgeat, pronounced ore-zha. The bottled stuff is sweeter and flatter than anything you'd make yourself.

A Bee’s Knees with ginger and sarsaparilla worked into the honey. Sharper than the original, and oddly nostalgic.

The Thyme Syrup ties everything together, highlighting the botanicals in the gin and the floral nature of the St-Germain.

Violette, orgeat, and passion fruit under a cap of foam. Tropical, and built to be looked at.

Figs and tonic. Autumn in a highball, and far less sweet than it sounds.

A Paloma with too many friends along, and somehow they all get on.

Smoke, honey, and falernum, lengthened with soda. A tall drink that stays interesting.

Mint, lime and rum. Makes a hot afternoon bearable.

Green Chartreuse carrying an entire drink. Herbal and bracing.

The drink that popularized the drinking straw. Low proof, endlessly refreshing.

Half tea, half lemonade. Named for a man who ordered it enough times that it stuck.

Cool, clean, and faintly savory with a pinch of salt.

Everything a mojito does except the rum, and it holds up better than you'd expect.

Gin, lime, soda, no sugar. One of the few classics that's genuinely dry.

More salad than cocktail, and better for it. Ginger beer over ginger ale, every time.

Tequila and grapefruit, long and salty. Mexico's actual favorite, not the Margarita.

Tequila, cassis and ginger beer. Also excellent with mezcal.

Five spirits and a splash of cola. Tastes like iced tea, drinks like a warning.

The original dirty soda, near enough. Swig built a chain on this exact combination.

The flavor every cola already hints at, made explicit.

Sharper than most dirty sodas, and the one to make if cream isn't your thing.

The salt is doing real work here. Without it the caramel just reads as sweet.

Coconut twice over, once fresh and once toasted.

Firmly a dessert. Treat it as one and it's very good.

The one that started the whole Utah soda-shop thing. Coconut and lime cut the prune note.

Raspberry and Dr Pepper is the pairing the soda shops reach for most after coconut.

Both classic Dr Pepper add-ins at once, which is less confused than it sounds.

Darker and less sweet than the cherry version.

The lemon is what makes it read as cheesecake rather than cherry cola.

Autumn in a glass. Best from about September to November.

Exactly what it says. No notes.

A soda-fountain drink from the 1880s, and still the best argument for syrup and soda water.

Lime, soda, a little sugar. The non-alcoholic descendant of the gin rickey, and a Prohibition survivor.

The other half of the classic rickey pair. Sour cherry syrup if you can find it.

Strawberries and coconut, which works far better over soda than it has any right to.

The cinnamon on top is the whole difference between this and a peach soda.

Blueberry needs the lemon. On its own it goes flat and jammy.

Good without cream, better with a splash of coconut cream if it's very hot.

No cream on this one. Dairy flattens the lavender straight out.

A piña colada with the rum taken out and the fizz put in.

Add cream and it becomes strawberries and cream. Both versions are right.

A creamsicle you drink through a straw.

A root beer float without the washing up.

Root beer already tastes faintly of caramel. This leans into it.

Campfire adjacent, and very hard to stop drinking.

Use real maple, and go light. It'll bully the root beer if you let it.

Chocolate and sarsaparilla, which is an old pairing and a good one.

Orange soda and cream. The whole dirty-soda idea in two ingredients.

The creamsicle with a berry underneath it.

Coconut cream rather than dairy, because mango and milk can turn chalky.

Tastes like the sweets. That is entirely the point.

The theme-park frozen drink, in a glass, in about a minute.

Pour the grenadine last and don't stir it. That's where the sunrise comes from.

Raspberry and coconut is the combination the soda shops sell most after the original.

Sharp and very green. Skip the cream on this one.

Two stone fruits and a citrus soda, which is more balanced than it reads.

Dark fruit against pineapple. Odd on paper, good in the glass.

Ginger keeps the peach from going cloying.

Ginger beer rather than ale, and no cream. The grown-up end of this list.

Pear is quiet, so let the vanilla and ginger carry it.

Cranberry juice does the work of a syrup here. Christmas, basically.

Apple, cinnamon and ginger. Best in the months you'd want a pie.

Floral and light. Lychee is worth seeking out for this one alone.

Go very light on the lavender. A quarter ounce is already plenty.

Soda water brings nothing sweet of its own, so the syrup is doing real work. Muddle the cucumber fresh.

Chai syrup carries the spice without brewing anything.

Cinnamon, cream and vanilla soda lands remarkably close to horchata.

Ridiculous on purpose. The almond is what makes it taste like frosting.

Three spirits and sherry floated on top. The name is a promise, not a description.

Tequila and grapefruit, done properly. Mexico drinks more of these than Margaritas.

Built on a seven-part ratio, with a few drops of gum arabic for body.

Twelve minutes of shaking for one drink. The texture is why people still do it.

Fussy, fruity, and historic. Raffles Hotel has a lot to answer for.

Rum, lime, ginger ale. The Mamie Taylor's Caribbean sister.

A gin sour lengthened with soda and served tall. The template for every Collins since.

Three rums and a stack of syrups. Traditionally limited to two per customer.

Citrus vodka and sour mix, lengthened with soda.

Vodka, peach schnapps, and lemonade. Porch drinking, formalized.

Cherry syrup and lime over vodka, topped with ginger ale. A mule with a sweet tooth.

Strawberry, mint, and ginger with vodka. Bright enough to drink year-round.

Cucumber vodka, yuzu, and soda. About as refreshing as a glass gets.

Pommeau, cream, and fennel-walnut syrup. A nightcap that means it.

Guava, pineapple, and ginger with a bar spoon of Herbsaint. Tropical with an anise streak.

Fresh grapefruit flesh blended in, with a grapefruit salt rim. A Salty Dog, taken further.

Rum, coconut milk, lime, demerara. Four ingredients, nothing wasted.

Sherry alongside rum, with sage and mint agave. Dry, herbal, and long.

Puerto Rican rum and Hawaiian agricole over ginger beer. Hibiscus keeps it bright.

Lemongrass syrup, mint, and crushed ice, swizzled until the tin frosts over.

Hibiscus rum, sloe gin, and pomegranate. Red the whole way down.

A screwdriver with Galliano floated on top, which is the whole difference.

The orange-and-grenadine one everybody means. Pour the grenadine last, then leave it alone.

The Tom Collins on bourbon. Longer and rounder than a whiskey sour.

Dry vermouth, soda and half a teaspoon of grenadine. Barely a cocktail, and deliberately so.

Applejack, sugar and soda. A cooler in the old sense: long, cold and barely sweet.

Gin, lime and raspberry lengthened with soda and ginger ale. Long and not very strong.

Rum, pineapple, orange and coconut cream, with nutmeg over the top.

The sling the Singapore one came from: gin, cherry brandy and Bénédictine, lengthened with soda.

Gin with a full ounce and a half of lime, lengthened with soda and swizzled cold.

A rum swizzle turned green with a tablespoon of crème de menthe.

A swizzle on Scotch, stirred until the glass frosts before the soda goes in.

Whiskey with a whole lemon and a whole lime in it, sweetened, reddened with grenadine and lengthened with soda.

Gin, fresh pineapple and strawberries muddled with sugar and grenadine, then lengthened with soda.

Brandy, rum and bourbon in one glass, soured and lengthened with soda. Less chaotic in the drinking than on paper.

Advocaat, overproof rum, orange juice and half a banana, blended. Creamy, fruity, and much stronger than it drinks.

Tequila with three citrus juices and grapefruit soda, served over ice in a salted clay pot. A Paloma with more going on.

Beer with vodka in it. The Russian answer to the Boilermaker, and it hits harder than either half suggests.

Tennessee whiskey and cola. No technique, no garnish, and no apology needed.

Tennessee whiskey, triple sec and lemon, lengthened with lemonade. A whiskey sour built for a long afternoon.

Southern Comfort with cranberry and lime. Three ingredients and no way to get it wrong.

Pisco, lime and ginger ale with a couple of dashes of bitters. Everything the Pisco Sour does, without the egg or the shaking.

Calvados and cassis under orange juice, built and barely stirred so the cassis stays at the bottom.

Six spirits in equal measure, topped with orange and pineapple. A Long Island that kept going.

Peach liqueur and amaretto lengthened with orange and lemon. Sweet, and then a dash of grenadine on top of that.

Vodka and iced tea over ice, with lemon to your own taste. A porch drink that asks nothing of you.

Figs muddled with honey and thyme, shaken with vodka and lengthened with tonic. Late-summer fruit in a long glass.

The Greyhound with gin under it. The botanicals meet the grapefruit halfway, which vodka never tries to do.

Gin lengthened with lemon-lime soda and a real squeeze of lemon. The fresh juice is the whole difference; without it this is a gin and soda.

Pastis softened with almond syrup and lengthened with water. It turns cloudy the instant the water hits, which is most of the pleasure of it.