21st Century
The 21st Century is a deliberate act of succession: Jim Meehan built it at New York’s PDT in 2007 as the next stop after the 20th Century, updating the art deco classic for a new hundred years. The logic is a straight swap along the timeline: tequila takes over from gin, lemon and white creme de cacao keep their seats, and an absinthe rinse replaces the Lillet as the aromatic frame. The result reads like the 20th Century’s worldlier heir. Blanco tequila’s pepper and agave push through where gin’s juniper used to sit, the cacao smooths the middle exactly as before, and the absinthe rinse hangs an anise perfume over the first sip that does the framing work the aperitif wine once did. Tasted beside its ancestor it makes a two-drink history lesson: the same silhouette redrawn in a different spirit, proof that the classic templates are engines rather than museum pieces.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish: Absinthe rinse is the garnish
Ingredients
60ml
The new century’s engine: a proper blanco with pepper and green agave character, young and audible. Oak-aged bottles blur into the cacao and mute the point.
22.5ml
Inherited from the ancestor unchanged, and it is the acid frame both Centuries are built on. Twenty-two millilitres against the same measure of cacao is the balance point.
22.5ml
The family heirloom: the same cocoa-butter smoothness the 1937 original carries, here meeting agave instead of juniper.
1 rinse
The rinse: a few millilitres swirled through the chilled coupe and discarded, framing every sip with anise the way the Lillet framed the original.
Instructions
Rinse a chilled coupe with the absinthe: a small pour swirled to coat the glass, excess discarded.
Add the tequila, lemon juice and creme de cacao to a shaker with ice.
Shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds.
Double strain into the rinsed coupe and serve without garnish.
Expert Tip
The rinse should be a rumour, not a statement. Pour a few millilitres into the chilled coupe, swirl it to coat the inside, and tip the rest out; what stays behind is a film, and a film is all the drink wants. Absinthe left sitting in the glass takes the anise from a frame to a flavour and flattens the cacao underneath it. Use a blanco you can taste. The whole argument of the drink is that agave sits where juniper used to, so an anonymous mixing tequila leaves it structurally sound and pointless. Pepper and green agave character is what you are looking for. Serve it without a garnish. The nose is already dressed by the rinse, and anything on the rim competes with the only aromatic the drink has.
Behind the 21st Century
Flavour Profile
The Origin
Jim Meehan built the 21st Century at PDT in New York in 2007. PDT, which stands for Please Don't Tell, had opened that year behind a phone booth in a hot dog shop on St Marks Place, and it became one of the most influential bars of the revival almost immediately.
The drink is a deliberate act of succession rather than a variation. The 20th Century first appeared in print in the 1937 Café Royal Cocktail Book, credited to Walter Whiting and reportedly named for the Twentieth Century Limited train, and it runs gin, Lillet Blanc, lemon and white crème de cacao. Meehan's update moves the whole thing along the timeline: tequila for gin, an absinthe rinse for the Lillet, and the lemon and cacao left exactly where they were.
It is one of very few modern drinks that names its ancestor in its own title, and it survives the comparison that invites.
Tequila Selection
A proper blanco with pepper and green agave character gives the drink its voice; anything oak-aged blurs into the cacao and mutes the point. This is a drink that wants the spirit young and audible, for the same reason the Paloma does: the agave is why tequila is here at all.
The Absinthe Rinse
A few millilitres swirled through the chilled coupe and discarded leaves an aromatic film that greets the drinker before the first sip: aroma as architecture, framing without joining. It is the same job the Lillet did in 1937, performed by perfume rather than by wine, and the discarded excess is the point rather than waste.
How to Serve It
Shaken hard, double strained into the rinsed coupe, no garnish: the nose is already dressed. Serve the two Centuries as a pair when the occasion allows, ancestor first. Few flights explain the logic of classic cocktails as cleanly, or as enjoyably.
The Cacao Problem
White crème de cacao is the ingredient that makes people doubt both drinks, and the doubt is reasonable until you taste it. Chocolate in a sour sounds like a dessert and is not.
The clear version carries cocoa butter smoothness and a light roasted note without the sugar or the colour of the brown version, and at 22.5ml against 22.5ml of lemon it reads as texture more than as flavour. What it actually does is fill the middle of the drink, giving the sour a body it would not otherwise have.
Substituting brown crème de cacao is the most common way this goes wrong. It is sweeter, heavier and unmistakably chocolate, and it turns a strange, elegant drink into a novelty.
Against the 20th Century
The two drinks share a skeleton and almost nothing else, which is what makes them worth pouring together.
The 1937 original runs on gin and Lillet: juniper against a soft, faintly bitter aperitif wine, with the cacao smoothing the join. It is floral, delicate and quite dry. The 2007 update runs on blanco tequila with absinthe in place of the wine, and the whole register drops: pepper and green agave in the middle, anise hanging over the top, and the same cacao doing the same job with much louder neighbours.
Pour the ancestor first. Taken in that order the succession is obvious, and the update sounds like an argument rather than a stunt.
Make it at home
The Spirit
TequilaRead the label before the price. Tequila only has to be 51% agave sugars, and no bottle is ever labelled mixto, so the words 100% agave are the only thing separating a spirit made from the plant from one made half from cane or corn.
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the 21st Century related to the 20th?
Which tequila should I use?
What does the absinthe rinse do?
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The Margarita is the most ordered cocktail in the United States, and that status has done to it what it did to the Mojito: margarita mix, bottled lime and the frozen resort serve have created a whole category of drink that carries the name without the substance. Made properly it is three ingredients: blanco tequila, fresh lime juice and orange liqueur, shaken cold with a salt rim. That is a sour at its most direct, and in a build this bare the quality of everything is immediately apparent. There is nowhere to hide a neutral tequila, a bottled lime or a cheap triple sec. The choice that matters most is not up versus rocks, which is a matter of preference. It is blanco versus reposado. Blanco is cleaner and more agave-forward and the lime meets the tequila directly; reposado is rounder, its oak putting vanilla and caramel against the lime in a different register. Both are correct, and blanco is the more coherent with fresh lime.
Paloma
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20th Century
The 20th Century is named not for the era but for a train: the 20th Century Limited, the streamlined express that ran New York to Chicago in sixteen hours of art deco swagger, red carpet on the platform and a barber on board. The cocktail appeared in 1937, credited to a British bartender named C.A. Tuck, and it is the most art deco drink ever built: chrome lines, improbable engineering, and a finish like a first-class lounge. The engineering is the improbable part. Gin and lemon make familiar sense; white creme de cacao and Lillet Blanc should not belong anywhere near them. Yet the four lock together like patisserie: the cacao reads as white chocolate rather than sweetshop, the Lillet adds a bitter-edged aperitif polish, and the lemon keeps the whole thing moving at express speed. It vanished with the train and returned with the cocktail revival, and it remains the best answer to anyone who thinks chocolate has no place in a serious drink: it does, at fifteen millilitres, travelling first class.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits