Highballs, page 2
52 recipes, page 2 of 3
Base Spirit
Difficulty Level
John Daly
The John Daly is an Arnold Palmer with vodka in it: iced tea, lemonade and a measure of spirit, over ice in a tall glass. The Palmer is tea and lemonade at three to one, named
Lynchburg Lemonade
Lynchburg Lemonade is Tennessee whiskey, triple sec, fresh lemon and sparkling lemonade over ice, named for the town where Jack Daniel's is distilled. It drinks dangerously
Michelada
The Michelada is cold lager seasoned like food: lime, salt, hot sauce and Worcestershire, poured over ice in a salt-rimmed glass. It is Mexico's standing answer to heat, hangovers
Mizuwari
The Mizuwari is Japan’s answer to a question the West never thought to ask properly: what if whisky and water were the entire ceremony? The name means cut with water, and the
Mojito
The Mojito is one of the oldest Cuban cocktails on record, its roots traced to a sixteenth-century proto-version called El Draque, named after Sir Francis Drake, whose fleet
Paloma
The Paloma is Mexico’s most popular cocktail by volume, considerably outselling the Margarita in the country that produces the tequila both are built on. Outside Mexico its
Pimm’s Cup
The Pimm’s Cup is British summer by the glass: Pimm’s No. 1 lengthened with sparkling lemonade over ice, the glass built up with cucumber, strawberry, orange and mint until it
Pink Gin & Tonic
The colour here comes from the tonic, not the gin, and that is the whole point of the drink. Aromatic tonic is tinted and flavoured with angostura bark, which means it carries the
Presbyterian
The Presbyterian is whiskey topped with equal parts ginger ale and soda water, and the split is the entire recipe. Ginger ale on its own makes a sweet highball. Soda on its own
Raspberry Lynchburg
The Raspberry Lynchburg is a Lynchburg Lemonade with Chambord taking half the triple sec's measure. Tennessee whiskey, black raspberry liqueur, a little orange, fresh lemon and
Rome With a View
Rome With a View is a Campari sour, which is a stranger idea than it sounds. Campari and dry vermouth split the base between them, thirty millilitres each, and there is no spirit
Rum and Coke
Two ingredients, no technique, and one of the most ordered drinks on earth. Rum and Coke has no documented inventor and no published specification. It appeared wherever American
Salty Dog
The Salty Dog is a Greyhound that learned the Paloma’s lesson early: the same spirit and grapefruit, rimmed with salt, and the rim changes everything. It surfaces in American bar
Screwdriver
The Screwdriver is the simplest cocktail with a proper origin story: American engineers and oil workers in the mid-century, spiking cans of orange juice with vodka and stirring
Seabreeze
The Seabreeze is vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice over ice, and the two juices are the entire drink. Cranberry is sweet-tart and grapefruit is bitter, and each corrects
Sex on the Beach
Sex on the Beach is the 1980s at full volume: vodka, peach schnapps, orange and cranberry, and a name engineered so that ordering it was the joke. The best-supported account has a
Sloe Gin & Lemon Tonic
Sloe gin is not gin, which is the first thing worth knowing and the reason this drink behaves the way it does. It is a liqueur — sloes steeped in gin with sugar, usually landing
Slow Comfortable Screw Against the Wall
The Slow Comfortable Screw Against the Wall has the longest name in the canon and the most complete crossword behind it. Slow is sloe gin. Comfortable is Southern Comfort. Screw
Snowball
The Snowball is advocaat, sharp lemonade and a squeeze of lime, built tall over ice. It is a British Christmas fixture and it is a better drink than its reputation
Stone Fence
The Stone Fence is as old as American drinking: spirit poured into cider and handed across a tavern bar. The colonial original was rum into hard cider, and legend has Ethan
Suffering Bastard
The Suffering Bastard is a war story with a garnish. Joe Scialom, the polyglot bartender at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, built it in 1942 as a hangover cure for officers of the
Tequila Sunrise
The Tequila Sunrise in its famous form was born at the Trident in Sausalito around 1971, where Bobby Lozoff and Billy Rice mixed tequila, orange juice and a sinking grenadine
Vodka & Mediterranean Tonic
A drink where the mixer is doing essentially all of the flavouring, and is therefore the only decision worth thinking about. Vodka is defined by what has been taken out of it, so
Whiskey Highball
The Highball is one of the oldest and most debated drink formats in the canon, with origin stories placing it variously in American railroad culture, British officers’ messes, and