What to do for the literary-minded boozer who wants to drink like a Chandler character? Make your own lime cordial.

What to do for the literary-minded boozer who wants to drink like a Chandler character? Make your own lime cordial.

The gimlet, as Terry Lennox tells Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye,” is “half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

Now that’s a helluva proclamation. I don’t agree with any of it — in fact, I’d say Lennox got what he deserved in the end, based solely on his martini opinions, without even factoring in his other crimes — but it is some great Chandler dialogue. The trouble is, while that recipe was indeed standard for decades, it makes one terrible drink.

The problem is the Rose’s Lime Juice. It’s loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and assorted adulterants, and it just tastes weird and fake. It wasn’t always this way; Rose’s was originally made with cane sugar. It was also owned by the Rose family, not by the Keurig Dr Pepper conglomerate that owns it now. But that was long ago.

Terry Lennox (and that other hard-drinking gimlet-evangelist, Ernie Hemingway) probably used that old version to mix gimlets. It’s not really an option anymore. You can still get the good version in the UK and Canada, but here in the by-god-USofA we don’t bow down to the queen, and we don’t insist on real ingredients. (Or whatever; the point is, we’ve lowered our collective standards for mass-produced lime cordial.)

Yielding to this sad state of affairs, many would-be gimlet drinkers have just given up on the cocktail. Or they’ve switched from lime cordial to a mix of lime juice and simple syrup. But that’s not the same; that gives you a tasty gin sour, not a gimlet.

So what to do for the literary-minded boozer who wants to drink like a Chandler character? Make your own lime cordial. It’s easy. There are a million recipes. The one I used comes from Jim Meehan’s “Meehan’s Bartender Manual,” a lovely and essential book published in 2017. (See instructions below. But also: Buy the book.) I also used his gimlet recipe, which caters to contemporary tastes by dialing the gin-to-cordial ratio from 1-to-1 way back to 4-to-1.

The result is still quite sweet — it’s a gimlet after all — but it’s also zesty and slightly bitter, almost spicy. The cordial accents the botanicals in the gin. You can lean into the citrus thing by buying more citrus-forward gin, or you can go with a standard juniper-heavy London dry. They work differently, but they both work.

Your gimlet won’t “beat martinis hollow,” but as Philip Marlowe might say, “It’s OK with me.”

Stir with ice in mixing glass 15-20 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wheel.

12 ounces simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, simmered till sugar dissolves, then cooled)

Grate zest from limes using a microplane. Combine zest with simple syrup in a nonreactive container. Steep 10 minutes. Fine-strain into jar. Cover and refrigerate for up to a week.

Pat Muir is a former Yakima Herald-Republic staff writer whose On the Bar drinks column ran regularly from 2014-2020. It will appear in Explore every two weeks.

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It’s not as good as a martini because you’re doing 4:1.

Make your cordial as described, but mix it 1:1. It’s all about the gin! Gimlets were for those who thought vermouth sucked. Lol

To be sure it is about the gin. That’s why it’s 4-1 (2 oz gin to 1/5 oz cordial). I can’t take it much sweeter. But, drink em how you like em I always say. And cheers!

Gah! I mean 1/2 oz of cordial.

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