John Collins

The whiskey lover's answer to the Tom Collins. Bourbon, fresh lemon, simple syrup, and fizzy soda water combine for a refreshing classic that's been cooling throats since the 1800s.

The John Collins and the Tom Collins share a confusing nominative history that makes their relationship one of the more tangled etymological puzzles in the cocktail canon. The Collins drinks take their names from John Collins, who was a head waiter at Limmer's Hotel on Conduit Street in London in the early 19th century. Limmer's was a fashionable London establishment frequented by military officers and sportsmen, and Collins was documented in contemporary accounts as known for a particular gin punch served in tall glasses. His drink used Hollands gin — the Dutch-style genever that was the dominant gin style in Britain at the time — with lemon juice, sugar, and soda water. When Old Tom gin, a lightly sweetened English gin, became popular in the mid-19th century, the same format made with Old Tom was distinguished as the Tom Collins. American bartending adopted both names and eventually applied them to other spirits: in the United States, the John Collins has most commonly referred to the version made with bourbon or rye rather than gin, while the Tom Collins retained its gin association. The versions appear in American bartending manuals from the 1870s onward, including Jerry Thomas's revised editions, and the John Collins name attached to bourbon brought the Collins template's refreshing tall-glass format into the American whiskey tradition.