Cosmopolitan Punch

The sophisticated 1990s martini transformed into an elegant batch cocktail, featuring citrus vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and fresh lime for stylish entertaining.

The Cosmopolitan's precise origin is contested among multiple claimants across Miami, San Francisco, and New York, but the version that became an international phenomenon is most credibly attributed to Toby Cecchini, who developed it in 1988 while bartending at The Odeon — the celebrated Tribeca restaurant and bar at 145 West Broadway that had been a center of New York's downtown art and media scene since opening in 1980. Cecchini has described learning of a rough precursor drink — vodka with Rose's lime and grenadine — from a colleague named Melissa Huffsmith-Roth who had encountered it in San Francisco's bar scene, and finding it unimpressive. He reformulated it using Absolut Citron, Cointreau, fresh lime juice, and a small measure of cranberry juice — just enough to turn the drink its characteristic pale pink — and served it in a martini coupe. The drink spread through downtown Manhattan's bar community and was then adopted and adapted by Dale DeGroff, who put his own version on the menu at the Rainbow Room in the mid-1990s, garnishing it with a flamed orange peel. When Sex and the City premiered on HBO in 1998 and the Cosmopolitan became the on-screen drink of choice for Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, the cocktail transformed from a New York insider's drink into the defining cocktail of an era. The IBA recognizes it as a Contemporary Classic. Cecchini himself has noted that the Cosmopolitan's wings came from its alluring pink color, its martini glass presentation, and the timely combination of citrus vodka and Cointreau.