Proving over the years to be more than just a workout for bartenders, the Ramos is also a wonderful base for variations, such as Jim Meehan’s matcha-flavoured twist, the Dragonfly.
45. Painkiller
This combination of Pusser’s Rum, cream of coconut, pineapple and orange was born in the 1970s on a white beach in the British Virgin Islands, at the Soggy Dollar Bar, so-named because of the need to wade ashore to take one of the six seats there. The drink was created by the bar’s English proprietor Daphne Henderson, and one of the regulars there, Pusser’s founder Charles Tobias, took note, with the rum brand eventually trademarking the name. A contemporary twist appeared on the list at Lyaness in London a few years ago – the Double Painkiller combined the bar’s Infinite Banana with gin, rum, toasted coconut, lemon and orange.
44. Fitzgerald
This deceptively simple modern classic, channelling age-old cocktails like the Gimlet and the Sour, was created on the fly by Dale DeGroff during service at New York’s Rainbow Room Promenade Bar, at some point in the 1990s. Responding to a customer asking for something beyond their usual G&T, DeGroff combined gin, lemon juice and sugar, adding a few dashes of Angostura, and the result was a hit.
Originally dubbed Gin Thing, the drink was eventually given this more literary name and made its first appearance in print in Degroff’s 2002 book The Craft of the Cocktail.
43. Corpse Reviver 2
Bartender Harry Craddock, who popularised the Corpse Reviver #2, and possibly invented it, warned in his 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book that “four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again”. Its life-giving properties aside, this is the most enduring of the Revivers, combining gin, triple sec, Lillet Blanc and lemon juice in equal parts, with a dash of absinthe. For a colourful, contemporary twist, there’s the Corpse Reviver No. Blue, by Jacob Briars, which replaces triple sec with blue curaçao. The first in the series, Corpse Reviver #1, is a mix of calvados, cognac and vermouth.
42. Gin Basil Smash
The venerable yet out-of-favour Smash, most often whiskey based, was given a new lease of life in 2008 when Germany’s Jörg Meyer created this contemporary classic. Inspired by the Whisky Smash, as well as a drink Meyer encountered that used basil as a garnish, he switched out the base for gin, originally calling his creation the Gin Pesto, before thankfully settling on its final name.
Le Lion Bar de Paris in Hamburg, where the drink made its first appearance, is now known as ‘the cradle of the Gin Basil Smash’, and serves no small quantity of these every night.
41. Sidecar
It’s been a winding road for the Sidecar in recent years on this list, up significantly last year to 26th place, and now down to 41st. Nevertheless, it flies the flag for cognac among the classics, combining that base spirit with triple sec and lemon juice, often served with a sugar rim. Thought to be an evolution of the Brandy Crusta, credit likely goes to either Pat McGarry at London’s Buck’s Club or Harry MacElhone at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. The Sidecar isn’t without its contemporary takes, although the 1920s Between the Sheets is well worth revisiting too, in which light rum joins the cognac base.
