Gin Sling
The Gin Sling is one of the oldest cocktail formats in existence. Jerry Thomas documented it in his 1862 Bartenders Guide, but the sling predates him by at least a century, with references appearing in American newspapers as early as the 1750s. At its core it is a simple thing: gin, citrus, sweetener, soda water, and nutmeg, built long and served over ice. Honest, unfussy, and completely satisfying when made with care. The sling sits at the intersection of the highball and the sour, with the length and refreshment of the former and the citrus backbone of the latter. It rewards good ingredients and correct proportion rather than technique or obscure components. The gin should be present. The lemon should be fresh. The soda should be cold and poured last. The nutmeg should be fresh and grated directly over the glass. Thomas was specific on that last point. In his manual he defined the sling by a single distinguishing detail: it had nutmeg on top. The toddy did not. That is the entire difference between the two formats as he recorded it. The nutmeg has largely disappeared from modern versions. It should not have.
Glassware: Sling Glass
Garnish: Freshly Grated Nutmeg over the top, Lemon Slice, Maraschino Cherry or a long and Lemon Peel draped over the rim
Ingredients
50ml
A London Dry with clear juniper character. The botanical profile of the gin defines the drink more than any other single ingredient in this build.
25ml
Squeezed immediately before use. The acid backbone of the drink and the element that keeps the sugar from making the build cloying.
15ml
One part white sugar dissolved in one part warm water. Keeps the sweetness clean and easily calibrated against the lemon.
Top (approximately 75–100ml)
Well chilled before pouring. Add last and pour gently down the inside of the glass to preserve the carbonation.
Instructions
Fill a highball glass with cubed ice.
Add the gin, fresh lemon juice, and sugar syrup to the glass.
Stir briefly to combine.
Top with cold soda water, pouring gently down the side of the glass to preserve the carbonation.
Stir once more, very gently, just enough to lift the ingredients from the bottom.
Grate fresh nutmeg directly over the surface of the drink.
Garnish with a lemon slice and serve immediately.
Expert Tip
Build this drink directly in the glass rather than shaking it. The Gin Sling is not a shaken drink: shaking introduces aeration and dilution that work against the clean, refreshing character the format is designed for. Pour the soda water last and pour it gently. Carbonation is fragile, aggressive pouring collapses it, and a flat Gin Sling is a disappointing one. Fresh lemon juice is the difference between a good Gin Sling and a forgettable one. Bottled juice is flat in character and sweet in a way that clashes with the sugar syrup rather than complementing it. The nutmeg is not optional if you are making this historically. Use a whole nutmeg and a fine grater, because pre-ground has lost most of its aromatic oils and adds powder without fragrance. Treat the syrup ratio as a starting point and taste as you build.
Behind the Gin Sling
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The sling is one of the original cocktail formats, appearing in American writing from the mid-eighteenth century and predating the word cocktail itself, which did not appear in print until 1806. In those early references it was a simple combination of spirit, sugar, and water, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes spiced: a working drink, practical and direct. Jerry Thomas documented it formally in his 1862 Bartenders Guide, the first serious American bartending manual, listing several sling variations alongside punches, cobblers, and smashes. By his time lemon juice had entered the recipe, ice was widely available in American cities, and the drink was close to its modern form. The Gin Sling is what the format looks like when you do not add anything it does not need.
The Nutmeg and the Toddy
In Thomas’s 1862 manual the sling and the toddy were essentially the same drink with one distinction: the sling had nutmeg grated on top and the toddy did not. That makes the nutmeg the most historically significant ingredient in the glass; a Gin Sling without it is, by Thomas’s own definition, closer to a toddy. Nutmeg was a standard finishing spice across the sling, punch, and toddy formats throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its disappearance from modern recipes is a quiet loss: freshly grated nutmeg over a cold, lemon-bright gin drink is immediate and not subtle. Use a whole nutmeg and a fine grater; the volatile oils begin to dissipate within minutes of grating, and pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of what makes it worth using.
The Singapore Sling Problem
Anyone who meets the Singapore Sling first arrives here with the wrong expectations. The Singapore Sling, created by Ngiam Tong Boon at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore around 1915, added cherry liqueur, Cointreau, Benedictine, pineapple juice, and grenadine to the original sling format: sweet, complex, tropical, and so far removed that the two share little beyond the name and the glass. The Gin Sling is not a simplified Singapore Sling; it is the original format the Singapore Sling elaborated upon, and it needed none of the additions to be complete.
The Four Components
Gin, fresh lemon juice, sugar syrup, and soda water: each does a specific job and none can be shortcut without the drink showing it immediately. The gin provides the botanical backbone; use a London Dry with enough juniper to hold its own, since a delicate or floral gin disappears into the citrus. The lemon juice should be squeezed immediately before use; it oxidises quickly, and the difference between juice squeezed an hour ago and thirty seconds ago is audible in the finished drink. Sugar syrup balances the tartness and adds body; the proportion is deliberately conservative, so the drink leans tart rather than sweet, adjusted upward if the lemon is sharp or the gin dry. Soda water lengthens the drink; pour it cold, fresh, and gently, because the carbonation changes the texture and refreshment entirely.
How to Serve It
Built directly in the glass over ice, with the soda water added last and the nutmeg grated over the top. Not shaken, not stirred in a mixing glass: shaking aerates the drink and works against the clean, light, transparent character the format is designed for. The Gin Sling will not generate conversation the way a Bijou or a Last Word will. What it will do is demonstrate that the simplest things done correctly are often the most satisfying. Four ingredients, a grating of nutmeg, and the oldest distinction in cocktail history. Made properly. Served cold. That is the whole point.
Make it at home
The Spirit
GinA flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Gin Sling?
How does it differ from a Singapore Sling?
Why nutmeg on top?
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Singapore Sling
The Singapore Sling was created by Ngiam Tong Boon at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore around 1915. It was built as a drink a woman could order in public without the social discomfort that accompanied ordering spirits directly, the pink colour and fruit-forward character providing a degree of cover that a straight gin drink would not have offered in that era. The cover worked. The drink outlasted the social conditions that made it necessary by more than a century. The recipe that circulated for decades after Ngiam's original was disputed, diluted, and in many cases replaced entirely by a pre-mixed version served at the Raffles Long Bar itself. The version documented here works from the most credible reconstruction: gin, Cherry Heering, Cointreau, Bénédictine, grenadine, fresh pineapple juice, fresh lime juice and Angostura bitters. It is a considerably more interesting drink than the commercial versions carrying the same name. Fresh pineapple juice is not optional. Tinned juice produces a flat, artificially sweet result the rest of the ingredients cannot compensate for.
Tom Collins
The Tom Collins is a gin sour lengthened with soda: gin, fresh lemon, sugar syrup and soda water over ice in a tall glass. The simplicity is deceptive. Built with a quality London Dry, lemon squeezed to order and well-chilled soda poured carefully, it is one of the most refreshing long drinks there is. Built with bottled juice and flat soda, it is one of the most disappointing. The name comes from one of the odder stories in the canon. The Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874 involved telling somebody that a man called Tom Collins had been disparaging them in a nearby bar, then sending them off to find a person who did not exist. It spread across American cities fast enough that the name entered everyday speech, and a long gin drink already being served as the John Collins acquired it almost by association. Old Tom gin, the sweeter style that preceded London Dry, was the format's original base and makes a rounder, gentler drink. Both are correct.
Gin Rickey
The Gin Rickey is gin, fresh lime juice and soda water over ice, and there is no sugar in it of any kind. That absence is the whole drink. It is what separates a Rickey from a Fizz, and it is why the gin matters more here than in almost anything else you can build. It is named after Colonel Joe Rickey, a Missouri lobbyist who drank his bourbon with lime and soda at Shoomaker's on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1880s Washington, consistently enough that the bartenders named the order after him. The gin version came shortly afterwards and overtook the original so completely that a Rickey now means gin unless you say otherwise. Rickey himself, by most accounts, thought the gin version was worse. He was outvoted. With no sweetener and only three ingredients, the freshness of the lime is the most consequential thing in the build. Squeezed to order it is bright and genuinely refreshing. Squeezed an hour earlier it is flat and slightly bitter, and nothing else in the glass can cover for it.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits