This Bronx cocktail changes up a traditional martini with the addition of a little sweetness and citrus. The sweet vermouth and orange juice in this cocktail make it less dry than a martini and lighten it up just a little.
The Bronx is supposed to have been invented shortly after 1900 by Johnnie Solon, who was a bartender at the Big Brass barroom at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The cocktail is named after the Bronx Zoo.
I found several literary references to the drink. There is plenty of speculation that Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and friends (The Great Gatsby) drank lots of Bronx cocktails. Proponents of this theory cite F. Scott Fitzgerald’s references to crates of oranges being delivered to the Gatsby mansion on Long Island every Friday and run through a mechanized juice extractor for weekend parties.
Bronx cocktails were mentioned in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Dusk of Dawn, in which there is a character who “knows a Bronx cocktail from a Manhattan.” They are also mentioned in Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. According to Hammett, the important difference between cocktails is the dance rhythm used to shake the drinks. The Manhattan is shaken to the rhythm of the fox trot and the Bronx is shaken to the rhythm of a country western two-step.
This recipe makes two cocktails.
Ingredients
- 3 ounces of gin
- 1/2 ounce of sweet vermouth
- 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth
- 1 ounce of orange juice (preferably fresh squeezed)
- Orange slices for garnish
Directions
Use martini glasses for the cocktail. If you put your glasses in the refrigerator an hour or so before making drinks, you can skip the instructions below for chilling them.
Fill the martini glasses with ice to chill them.
Add the liquid ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Add lots of ice to the shaker and shake well (to the rhythm of the two-step).
Empty the ice from the glasses. Pour the drinks into the glasses. Garnish them with the orange slices.
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