Southside

A pre-Prohibition combination of lemon, mint and gin.

Somewhere on the cocktail spectrum between a mojito and a Gimlet, this lemon-and-mint gin drink is claimed by New York’s 21 Club, supposedly created during Prohibition. Many cocktail historians, however, place its invention some forty years earlier, at the Southside Sportsmen’s Club on Long Island. Wealthy Manhattanites would visit the private resort to hunt, fish and drink Mint Juleps, which is what the Southside surely evolved from. Then seen as a drink strictly for the country club set, it’s way too tasty for the golf-hating hoi polloi to ignore today.

Ingredients

Serving: 1

  • 2 parts gin, preferably Plymouth Gin
  • 2 parts gin, preferably Plymouth Gin
  • 1 part lemon juice
  • 1 part lemon juice
  • 1/2 part sugar syrup (2:1, sugar:water)
  • 1/2 part sugar syrup (2:1, sugar:water)
  • pinch mint
  • pinch mint

Garnish: mint leaf

Directions
  1. Combine the liquid ingredients and a pinch of mint in a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake vigorously and fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
  2. Garnish with the mint leaf.

Tagged: Plymouth Gin