Cocktail of the Week #33: Tom Collins

I was looking forward to this one. It’s another venerable cocktail of the lounge era, like the Harvey Wallbanger and the Singapore Sling. The results unfortunately were… disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong! It’s a decent enough cocktail in its own right, but it seemed to be missing something. The gin was not jibbing with the lemon juice and powdered sugar. The drink tasted familiar, but somehow lacking.

The answer was easy to find: the only difference between a Tom Collins and that tiki bar favorite of ours, the Singapore Sling, is (drumroll please) cherry brandy! That’s right; a little cherry brandy is all that is needed to elevate a Tom Collins from a rather pedestrian drink to one of yummy goodness. Unfortunately, it stops being a Tom Collins at that point.

C’est l’vie.

We’re charting this one as a miss, boys and girls. I may have to chuck this one up to the luck of the draw. I feel if we had drawn this drink before the Singapore Sling, we would have rated it a hit. Mrs. Wit, on the other hand, feels a venerable gin & tonic would have been a much better use of the liquor involved.

Scoreboard.
Hits: 24
Misses: 14