Ask A Bartender: Where Can I Find An Honest Gimlet?

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Kai Soderberg, GoLocalPDX contributor

A real gimlet, according to Philip Marlowe and many of his contemporaries, is never made with real limes.

“A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s lime juice and nothing else.” This according to Philip Marlowe, private operative and a man of many virtues, gimlets apparently not being one of them. The drink has been around for a while - probably, in one carnation or another, just a bit longer than gin. Of the many theories of its development the one I like the best, not because it’s the most probable, merely the most entertaining, is that the drink is named after a surgeon for the British Royal Navy who introduced it to his messmates as a fun way to combat scurvy. Rose’s lime juice has become, for a generation of drinkers all around the age of eighty or ninety, an integral part of the gimlet cocktail. Anything made without is an impostor.

I like this. I like how strongly people feel about this. It proves that taste is subjective - not that that was really ever in question - and we are captives of not only our experiences, also the collective experiences of those surrounding us. Not only our circumstances, also our preferences are informed by our neighbors and contemporaries. As unsettling of a thought this is for a misanthrope, it is an inescapable reality.

At its root, the gimlet is about as simple as cocktails get. It’s built off of one main spirit, traditionally gin - though vodka gimlets, we must admit however begrudgingly, also exist - then balanced with tart and sweet. It may have not been called a gimlet until fairly recently, but people have been drinking them for a while. In Cuba they have the daiquiri, which is the same exact thing except instead of gin, it’s rum, and if you order one at a large chain restaurant like Applebee’s, it’ll come blended with strawberry puree. (Nothing wrong with that, it’s probably pretty good, even, but it’s not a daiquiri). So, how could a drink that is seemingly so simple as gin, lime and sugar, have so many variations, and so many strong feelings to back them up. Why would anybody argue over things that are a matter of taste? It’s impossible to win the argument, after all.

Why, exactly. This brings us back to the unsettling reality that our tastes reflect our values to a certain extent. This is not, of course, entirely true. If you were to make a gimlet with, say, lighter fluid and do a blind tasting, you’d probably find that the dislike of one of the drinks, through all gaps generational, racial, those based on class and gender, would be unanimous. But somebody who came of drinking age in the fifties or sixties will remember that the gimlet was a drink dominated by Rose’s lime juice. Sweet, chemically, almost artificial tasting, Rose’s lime juice certainly has a distinct flavor, it’s not tart but somehow carries the suggestion of tartness. It is not bad, just different. You really can’t compare a fresh lime gimlet with a Rose’s gimlet anymore than you can compare an organic smoothie to a 7-Eleven Slurpee. They both have their place and they both make me happy. That’s about the extent of their similarities.

Because the craft cocktail revitalization in Portland celebrates and encourages the use of fresh, high quality ingredients to make cocktails, most well respected establishments will not have Rose’s lime juice. Some won’t even carry grenadine. Every proper bar should have the resources to pump out the classic drinks even when that requires compromising inventory with the inclusion of something trashy (especially because some of those trashy ingredients also happen to be dirt cheap). When a bar does this, they are paying homage to the older generation. It’s a sign that they want everybody’s business, not just trendy young people's. And when you cater exclusively to trends, your business will only be viable for the amount of time that the trend is. And if I don’t see the use of fresh ingredients in Portland’s restaurants and bars as a trend, it’s only because I refuse to. As much as I hate to think that I have anything in common with the guy sporting the man bun sitting across the room from me, it strikes me that we’re both eating the same thing.

After lunch, I may just rinse my mouth out with an old acrid gimlet. Know anywhere?

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