Bronx
Shake ∙ 3 min ∙ 20.3% ABV ∙
The Bronx is a shaken gin cocktail built from both sweet and dry vermouth plus fresh orange juice, making it a fruitier cousin of the Martini family. Orange juice softens the gin's edge up front, the two vermouths trade sweet and dry notes through the middle, and the finish stays crisp rather than syrupy.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Shake all ingredients with ice: London dry gin 45 mlRosso vermouth 20 mlDry vermouth 15 mlOrange juice 30 mlOrange bitters 1 dash
- Fine strain into the chilled glass
- Express an orange twist over the cocktail and use as garnish
Tips
- Shake hard for a full 12-15 seconds with ice since the orange juice needs vigorous agitation to fully integrate and aerate against the two vermouths.
- Use freshly squeezed orange juice strained of pulp, never carton juice, as the thinner texture blends cleaner with the 20 ml rosso and 15 ml dry vermouth split.
- Double strain through a fine mesh into the chilled coupe to catch citrus pulp and ice shards, keeping the surface glossy and clear.
- Express the orange twist over the drink to release its oils before dropping it in, reinforcing the citrus notes already carried by the juice and bitters.
History
The Bronx is a pre-Prohibition American cocktail whose invention is credited to several different bartenders, a common pattern for drinks from that era. The most widely repeated account, recorded by Waldorf-Astoria historian Albert Stevens Crockett in his 1935 book on the hotel's bar, credits bartender Johnnie Solon with creating the drink there, reportedly naming it after a recent visit to the Bronx Zoo, which had opened in 1899. However, other sources dispute this: a Virginia newspaper from February 1901 already referred to a J. E. "Curly" O'Connor of the Waldorf-Astoria as the drink's inventor, predating Solon's own account, and a 1934 cocktail book instead traced the drink to Philadelphia in 1905, crediting restaurateur Joseph Sormani with bringing it to prominence after encountering it there. Period bar guides from 1908 also gave differing recipes for the drink, and one popular version, credited to bartender Billy Malloy of Pittsburgh, became the template that endured as the standard Bronx. By the mid-1910s the cocktail, essentially a Martini extended with orange juice, had become one of the most famous mixed drinks in America, ranking behind only the Martini and the Manhattan in a well-known 1934 ranking of the world's most popular cocktails.
