Week 9 - Back to the cocktails, Tom Collins

After our little diversion through Asia, it is time to get back to the cocktails. This week it is another cocktail with movie connections. The Tom Collins was the drink of choice for Faye Dunaway's character in Chinatown. Coincidentally, I watched Meet the Fockers last night for the first time, and Jack Nicholson makes Tom Collins' for Robert de Niro and Blythe Danner when they come to visit.

The Tom Collins is 2 oz gin, 1 oz lemon juice, 1 tsp superfine sugar, and 3 oz club soda garnished with a maraschino cherry and an orange slice. The club soda is a nice addition. It gives the Tom Collins a lighter taste than the cocktails we have tried previously. You can vary the amount of club soda you add to adjust the strength of the taste and alcohol content.

If you do not like gin, you can make a Vodka Collins. Just replace the gin with vodka. (Or, as you could guess, you can make any kind of Collins you want by substituting your liquor of choice for the gin.)

The Collins is a good drink. It is not particularly bold and does not have a striking taste, but it is refreshing and pleasant. It is more of a casual drink, perfect to drink while sitting on the patio outside your home on a warm day visiting with some old friends.

This breaks from the theme we were developing previously that good cocktails have complexity and depth. Tom Collins is simple and straightforward, but it is still very enjoyable. Maybe it is not the complexity that makes cocktails what they are. (Yeah, I know. It is the alcohol.) I guess it is the variety that has made it interesting so far. Most of these drinks are new to me, but I have heard of them before, so it is fun to try them and see how they taste. Drinking the same drink over and over would probably not be the same.