Cranberry Collins

The Cranberry Collins belongs to the Collins family of tall, carbonated sours, whose lineage traces to the John Collins, a gin, lemon juice, sugar, and soda water drink attested by 1869 and believed to have originated with a headwaiter of that name at Limmer's Old House, a London hotel and coffee house near Mayfair active around 1790 to 1817. As the drink crossed to the United States and its gin base shifted from genever to the sweeter Old Tom style, it became known as the Tom Collins, with the first published recipe appearing in Harry Johnson's 1882 bartending manual; a rival account instead ties the Tom Collins name to a New York and Philadelphia prank of 1874 known as the Great Tom Collins Hoax, in which bartenders began serving the drink to people who came in asking after a fictitious man named Tom Collins. Both stories are repeated in cocktail histories without a definitive resolution. Over time the Collins format became a template applied to other spirits and flavorings, keeping the citrus-and-soda structure while swapping the base and sweetening element. The Cranberry Collins follows this pattern as a fruit-forward variation, replacing the classic gin base with a flavored spirit and folding in cranberry juice alongside the traditional lemon and soda for a tart, pink-hued take on the long drink.