Old Friend
The Old Friend is gin and Campari with the bitterness turned down and the fruit turned up: fresh grapefruit juice does what a Negroni asks the drinker to accept, and an elderflower whisper rounds off what is left. It is generally attributed to Jim Meehan, the bartender behind PDT, who built it around 2012. The proportions are his style: precise, small, and unwilling to round anything to a convenient number. twenty-two and a half millilitres of grapefruit is not an accident, and neither is the seven and a half of elderflower. What it does well is introduce people to Campari. A Negroni asks for a taste already acquired; this one arrives blush pink, floral at the edges and bitter only underneath, and converts more drinkers than any amount of arguing. Shaken and served up, it is bitter enough to count as an aperitif and gentle enough to hand to someone who says they do not like bitter drinks.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish: Lemon Twist
Ingredients
45ml
A London Dry with visible juniper. The Campari and the grapefruit are both loud, and a soft contemporary gin gets lost between them rather than holding the middle.
15ml
Fifteen millilitres rather than the Negroni's thirty. It is seasoning the grapefruit here rather than leading, and at full measure it flattens the fruit and the blossom together.
7.5ml
The smallest useful measure. Seven and a half millilitres rounds the grapefruit's bitter edge; double it and the blossom takes the drink over entirely.
22.5ml
Squeezed to order. Ruby gives colour and sweetness, white gives a drier, sharper drink. Bottled juice tastes cooked and there is nothing in a four-ingredient glass to cover it.
Instructions
Add the gin, Campari, elderflower liqueur and grapefruit juice to a shaker.
Fill with cubed ice and shake hard for 12 seconds.
Double strain into a chilled coupe.
Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
Expert Tip
Squeeze the grapefruit. Bottled juice is flat and slightly cooked, and in a drink where the fruit is one of only four things in the glass there is nowhere for that to hide. A ruby grapefruit gives you the colour as well as the sweetness; a white one makes a sharper, more austere drink that some people prefer. Keep the elderflower at seven and a half millilitres. It is there to round the grapefruit's bitter edge, not to perfume the glass. At fifteen the blossom takes over and the drink starts tasting of the liqueur rather than of gin and fruit, which is the most common way this one goes wrong. Double strain it. Grapefruit throws pulp, and pulp in a coupe reads as carelessness.
Behind the Old Friend
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
The drink is generally attributed to Jim Meehan, who opened PDT in New York in 2007 and spent the following decade writing the specs that a good deal of the industry now works from. This one dates from around 2012 and was built for a restaurant bar rather than for PDT itself.
The exact-measure style is the giveaway. twenty-two and a half millilitres of grapefruit and seven and a half of elderflower are not numbers anyone reaches by eye, and they have not been rounded for convenience in the retelling either. Somebody tasted their way to them.
Why the Grapefruit Is the Point
Campari and grapefruit are already related. A lot of Campari's bitterness reads as pith and a lot of its sweetness reads as peel, which is why the Jasmine can put Campari and lemon together and produce something most drinkers swear is grapefruit.
The Old Friend takes the opposite route and pours the fruit itself. That changes the job Campari has to do. Instead of supplying the whole bitter register, it seasons a fruit that is already bitter, which is why fifteen millilitres is enough where a Negroni needs thirty. The result is recognisably a Campari drink without ever being a demanding one.
The Elderflower's Seven and a Half Millilitres
Elderflower liqueur is sweet, and at any generous measure it dominates. Here it is doing a specific and small job: taking the hard edge off grapefruit's bitterness in the same way a barspoon of sugar would, but with a floral note attached that softens the Campari at the same time.
Get it wrong and you notice immediately. At fifteen millilitres the drink smells like elderflower and tastes like a garden. At seven and a half you cannot name it, and the drink is better for that.
How It Compares to a Negroni
Both are gin and Campari, and there the resemblance stops. A Negroni is stirred, undiluted by juice, and built to be bracing. The Old Friend is shaken, has a third of its volume in fresh fruit, and is built to be easy.
That makes it useful in a way the Negroni is not. It is the drink to pour for someone who has decided they do not like bitter things, because the bitterness arrives underneath the grapefruit rather than in front of it.
How to Serve It
Shake hard for twelve seconds, double strain into a chilled coupe and express a lemon twist over the top. Lemon rather than grapefruit: there is already plenty of grapefruit in the glass, and the lemon oil gives the nose something the palate is not about to repeat.
Serve it cold, before food, and early in the evening, when the grapefruit still has something to do besides sweeten.
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 an Old Friend cocktail?
Who created the Old Friend?
Can I use less elderflower, or none?
How does it compare to a Jasmine?
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Jasmine
The Jasmine is the modern classic that performs a magic trick: gin, Campari, orange liqueur and lemon, and the finished drink tastes, unmistakably and to everybody who tries it, of pink grapefruit. Paul Harrington built it in 1990s California for a friend named Jasmin, published it in his pioneering book Cocktail, and the accidental grapefruit has been converting drinkers ever since. The illusion is arithmetic. Campari’s bitter orange plus Cointreau-style sweetness plus lemon’s acid lands precisely on grapefruit’s coordinates, so three ingredients triangulate a fourth fruit that never enters the glass at all. It is the drinks world’s favourite proof that flavour is construction rather than contents. It drinks as a dry, blush-pink sour with a properly bitter finish, and it is one of the great Campari gateways for the aperitivo-shy: the bitterness arrives dressed as fruit, and by the time anybody notices they are two in and asking questions about Negronis.
Greyhound
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Old Pal
The Old Pal is rye, Campari and dry vermouth in a Boulevardier's shape with the sweet vermouth swapped out. That single change does considerably more than it sounds like it should. Sweet vermouth in a Boulevardier is a cushion: it pads the Campari's bitterness and rounds the whiskey. Take it away and put dry vermouth in its place, and the Campari argues unpadded while the rye's pepper sharpens. The drink runs leaner, drier and more bracing than its amber sibling, and it belongs before dinner where the Boulevardier belongs after, which is a real distinction rather than a stylistic one. Both come out of Harry MacElhone's Paris in the 1920s and both appear in his books. This one is dedicated to William Robertson, a sports journalist on the Paris Herald and the old pal of the title, which is a more affectionate origin than most drinks manage to claim, and a rarer one than it ought to be.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits