Cocktails of NYC, Bronx Cocktail

Posted on January 6, 2013

This cocktail is well known, though of recent vintage to me. I’ve made a bunch of these now, and I’ve settled on blood orange and very accurate measuring as the way it comes out best. I am using Greenhook Gin which is made in Brooklyn, and it’s much more juniper and floral than the citrusy Breuekelen. I really like it and can’t wait to go through many of my other gin drinks using it. So a Bronx is basically a martini with orange juice, or rather a “perfect martini” with orange juice (a ‘perfect martini’ is one with both types of vermouth.) This is a bigger drink than many of the smaller cocktails I’ve been making and I’m using my 4.5 oz glasses with it.

2 oz Greenhook Gin
1 oz fresh blood orange juice (it’s about a whole small blood orange)
1/2 oz dry vermouth (Noilly Prat)
1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Martini Rosso)

shaken with ice and strained in a chilled glass.

The Bronx is supposedly the first cocktail with orange juice, or the first juice cocktail, though I don’t fully understand when that is said because lemon and lime juice abound in recipes. And certainly there were sweeter drinks, and shrubbs and smashes prior. But it makes sense that it’s early because you really don’t get a profound orange flavor from the drink, it’s not gin and juice at all. In these proportions the drink is neither sour, nor sweet, not orangy, nor strongly tasting of the vermouths. What is great about this drink when I’ve made it right is that everything is in balance. You taste the gin, you taste the vermouth, and the orange but it’s all hanging together nicely.