Recipe

• 1.5oz gin (I used St. George Botanivore)
• .5oz honey syrup (Dissolve 1 part honey in 1 part warm water)
• .5oz lemon juice
• (optional) 3 drops lavender tincture
• (optional) Sweet lavender salt (combine crushed dried lavender with salt and sugar)

Wet the rim of a glass with the lemon and coat with the sweet&salty lavender mix. Shake the other ingredients with ice and strain into the glass

About

This is a gin cocktail from the American Prohibition era that is so simple that I’ve always overlooked it in favor of ‘wilder’ combinations. I finally whipped one up and wow, it’s no wonder this is a classic that still has a strong presence in modern cocktail bars. It is so good and equally easy, with ingredients even a casual home bar should have on hand.

Many cocktails born during Prohibition made use of low-quality home-made “bathtub gin” and thus the use of sweeteners and flavorful additions were absolutely critical to mask the poor, sometimes vile, spirit. Since proper gin was not accessible during Prohibition, people made their own versions by combining harsh grain alcohols (whatever they could get their hands on) with random essences and botanicals. These became dubbed as “bathtub gin” not because they were created inside bath tubs (thank goodness), but because the concoctions were topped off with water from a bath tub instead of a sink faucet due to the size of the bottles they were filled in.

This limitation of the era challenged people to come up with creative ways of imbibing to make the drinks actually palatable, and hence many delicious cocktails were born during this period. I couldn’t resist adding a spin on this cocktail using a sweet&salty lavender rim along with some homemade lavender tincture, so feel free to add your own twists on this classic!