Gin or vodka: the Martini, Gimlet, Collins and Sour in both

Both start as spirit of agricultural origin, and both must reach 37.5% ABV in Britain. Gin must taste predominantly of juniper. Vodka may not be given a predominant flavour at all. What is vodka and what is gin set out the two definitions.

In a drink, that one difference decides what the other ingredients meet. With gin, vermouth, lime cordial or lemon meet juniper, coriander and citrus peel. With vodka they meet strength and texture, and become the flavour of the drink themselves.

The IBA’s Dry Martini is 60ml of gin and 10ml of dry vermouth, stirred with ice and strained into a chilled glass, with lemon oil or an olive. The Martini on our pages follows it, and the Vodka Martini beside it keeps the same 60ml and 10ml.

What changes is everything around the measures. Take away the botanicals and the drink rests on temperature and mouthfeel, so freeze the vodka and the Martini glass an hour ahead. Vermouth is now the one flavour in the glass besides the spirit, so it stays at a seventh of the drink and has to be fresh: opened dry vermouth goes in the fridge and is used within four weeks. A twist or an olive counts for more than it would with gin.

Stir both. Bond’s shaken, not stirred, is a film line before it is a recipe; Wikipedia’s article on the phrase notes that Bond himself first says it on screen in Goldfinger, in 1964. A shaken Martini comes out cloudy and lighter in body, and shaken or stirred explains when each is right. The gin Martini’s longer story is in Martini, Negroni and the gin and vermouth drinks.

The Gimlet on our pages takes 22.5ml of lime cordial to 60ml of gin, stirred and served up in a coupe. Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye, published in 1953, has it as half gin and half Rose’s lime juice, far sweeter than most people now want. The Vodka Gimlet keeps the same measures and method.

Few of the gin drinks that bartenders remade with vodka kept a place of their own. The Gimlet did, because ice-cold vodka and cordial make a clean, simple drink.

Without juniper there is nothing between you and the cordial. Preserved lime is rounder than fresh juice, a little cooked, with a bitter edge from the zest, and a poor cordial tastes mostly of sugar, so buy a good one or make it. Both pages also give a version with fresh lime and syrup, shaken, which is sharper and brighter.

The IBA lists the John Collins, and makes it a Tom Collins with Old Tom gin. The Tom Collins on our pages is longer than the IBA’s: 60ml of London dry with 30ml of lemon, 15ml of syrup and 90ml of soda. The Vodka Collins beside it takes 50ml of vodka, 25ml of lemon and 20ml of syrup, shaken, then lengthened with the same 90ml of soda.

With gin, juniper pushes against the lemon. With vodka nothing does, so the drink tastes of lemon first, then sugar and fizz, with the spirit underneath. The gin long drinks compared covers the rest of the Collins family.

The Gin Sour and the Vodka Sour share a recipe: 60ml of spirit, 25ml of lemon and 20ml of sugar syrup, with egg white as an option, dry shaken first. With vodka there is no spirit flavour to hide behind, only acid against sugar, so it is a good sour to learn balance on. Taste the lemon first, because lemons change through the year, and how to balance a cocktail explains why a few millilitres show.

Base spirit, orange liqueur and citrus is a familiar sour shape. The IBA’s White Lady takes 40ml of gin, 30ml of triple sec and 20ml of lemon, shaken and served up, and the version on our pages follows it. The Kamikaze puts vodka into the same shape with lime: 45ml of vodka with 22.5ml each of triple sec and lime.

They are relations rather than a matched pair. Lemon is softer than lime, and with gin the orange meets the citrus peel among the botanicals; with vodka, orange and lime are the whole drink. Add 30ml of cranberry to that shape and it becomes a Cosmopolitan. The orange liqueurs compared covers which triple sec to pour.

The Gin and Tonic on our pages takes 100ml of tonic to 50ml of gin, in a glass full of ice. The Vodka and Mediterranean Tonic takes 50ml of vodka from the freezer, 150ml of a rosemary and thyme tonic and a sprig of bruised lemon thyme, in a copa packed with ice.

This is the pair where vodka’s plainness wins. Rosemary and juniper share a resinous, pine-like note, so gin and a rosemary tonic smear into one another. Vodka adds alcohol and body and keeps out of the herbs’ way, and with three parts of tonic to one of spirit the rosemary and thyme reach the nose first.

The IBA’s Vesper is 45ml of gin, 15ml of vodka and 7.5ml of Lillet Blanc, shaken and served up with lemon zest. The ratio is Ian Fleming’s, from Casino Royale in 1953, where Bond dictates it to a barman and asks for it shaken; Martini, Negroni and the gin and vermouth drinks tells that story and what became of Kina Lillet.

The vodka dilutes the gin’s botanicals without bringing a flavour of its own, so the gin reads softer than it would in a Martini. Use a jigger for the IBA’s 7.5ml of Lillet Blanc: it is easy to double by eye, and a heavy pour of a sweet wine hides the gin.

Reach for gin when the drink should taste of botanicals and the modifier should sit behind them: a Martini with juniper in it, a Collins with a dry edge. Reach for vodka when the modifier should lead: preserved lime in a Gimlet, herbs in a tonic, coffee in an Espresso Martini. Put gin beside coffee or cream and its botanicals fight them; vodka lets them be.

Swap at the same measure the first time and change nothing else. A vodka drink built on gin measures can taste thin, which is why the Vodka Collins on our pages carries 5ml more syrup than the Tom Collins. Taste, then move the syrup or the citrus by a few millilitres. Neither spirit is the correct one.

The Moscow Mule is the one vodka classic that went the other way. It was written for vodka, and the mule pages swap in tequila, Irish whiskey or spiced rum rather than gin; what is vodka tells how the Mule put vodka on American bar lists in the first place.

The Dry Martini, John Collins, White Lady and Vesper specifications are the IBA’s, read on 12 October 2026 and linked where each is used. The other measures are those on our cocktail pages, and the vodka and gin definitions are the retained Regulation (EC) 110/2008.