Water Lily

An equal-parts gin cocktail with crème de violette, triple sec, and lemon juice that blooms a striking pale lavender in the glass.

The Water Lily was created in 2007 by bartender Richard Boccato at Little Branch on Leroy Street in New York City's West Village. Little Branch, opened by Sasha Petraske — the founder of Milk & Honey — and Joseph Schwartz in 2005, was one of the cluster of pre-Prohibition-revival bars that defined New York craft cocktail culture in the mid-2000s. The drink was created spontaneously: a guest named Georgette Moger-Petraske requested something with violet and gin, and Boccato composed an equal-parts drink from gin, Cointreau, crème de violette, and fresh lemon juice on the spot. The name references the guest's middle name, Lillian. Jim Meehan later adapted the recipe at PDT (Please Don't Tell) — the speakeasy bar he had opened behind a phone booth at Crif Dogs on St. Mark's Place in 2007 — substituting crème de violette for the original violet syrup and publishing it in The PDT Cocktail Book (2011). Meehan described it as a riff on the Corpse Reviver No. 2, sharing the gin-Cointreau-lemon structure but substituting crème de violette for both the Lillet Blanc and the absinthe rinse of that classic. The Water Lily's equal-parts structure produces a drink whose lavender-purple color and floral aromatics are as appealing visually as the flavor is balanced.