Bourbon Fruit Cup
Build; Churn ∙ 4 min ∙ 12.9% ABV ∙
A Bourbon Fruit Cup is a build-style bourbon highball with orange curaçao, rosso vermouth, and a splash of ginger ale and cola, topped with fresh fruit. Bourbon warmth meets orange-and-vermouth sweetness up front, softened by fizzy ginger-cola effervescence and a bright, fruit-forward finish from the garnish.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Pour all ingredients into the glass: Bourbon 25 mlOrange curaçao liqueur 25 mlRosso vermouth 25 mlAngostura aromatic bitters 2 dashesGinger ale 50 mlCola 50 ml
- Half fill the glass with ice
- Churn
- Add a citrus slice and a couple of mint leaves from garnish
- Fill to the brim with ice
- Garnish with lemon slices, orange slices, strawberries and mint sprigs
- Note: Can be scaled up and served from a punch bowl or a large pitcher
Tips
- Fill the Collins glass with fresh ice first, then build bourbon, curaçao, and vermouth directly over it before topping to control dilution.
- Add the ginger ale and cola last and pour gently down the side of the glass to preserve carbonation instead of stirring it flat.
- Give the spirits and bitters a brief stir to combine before topping with the sodas, since stirring afterward strips away the fizz.
- Slap the mint sprig against your hand to release aroma, then nestle it among the lemon, orange, and strawberry garnish for a fuller nose.
History
Fruit cups are a traditionally English style of drink, gin-based cups of spirit mixed with liqueurs, spices, and fruit, lengthened with lemonade or ginger ale. The category's best-known ancestor is Pimm's, invented in the 1840s by James Pimm, an oyster bar owner in London who served a gin-based tonic in a small tankard called a No. 1 Cup as a digestive aid for his seafood customers, a name that stuck once the drink was bottled and sold commercially. Fruit cups became a fixture of English summer entertaining from the 1920s onward, and later bartenders periodically produced their own versions using other base spirits, following a pattern Pimm's itself had already set when it issued Scotch-, brandy-, and rum-based cups in the mid-20th century. The Bourbon Fruit Cup belongs to this modern lineage: it was created in June 2017 by a British drinks writer at the Cabinet Room in London as part of a numbered series of Fruit Cup riffs, each built on the same gin-based Fruit Cup No.1 template but with a different base spirit, in this case swapping in bourbon whiskey.
