How to Make a Gordon’s Cup, the Juicy Gin Cocktail With a Zing

The Gordon’s Cup is the nested Russian dolls of sour-style drinks. It’s like if you put a Gimlet through the movie Inception. It takes the primary tension of its family of cocktails, and cubes it. Layered. Deeper. More. 

To explain: Sours, as a cocktail family, are all about the push-and-pull. You need resistance. This is why your early fumblings in the mixological realm were likely terrible, because you combined, probably, cranberry juice (sweet) with orange juice (sweet), triple sec (sweet again) and Fireball (literally liquid candy). 

This is also why it’s so satisfying when you finally get it right. There’s the same amount of whiskey in a Whiskey Sour as there is in an Old Fashioned, but it’s leagues easier to drink, because of the magic tension of sour drinks: You take something very sour, like lemon juice, and match it with something very sweet, like simple syrup, and their perfectly balanced tug-of-war is so engaging to your palate, that the heat of the alcohol just glides right by. 

The Gordon’s Cup takes this principle to its logical extreme. It was invented in 2005 by the late Sasha Petraske, the visionary who founded Milk & Honey in New York and in doing so kickstarted the entire cocktail renaissance, and who had a keen and prescient eye for cocktail structure. So one day he’s thinking about the Caipirinha, that legendary sour from Brazil, and fixates on a point: Unlike a Daiquiri or Margarita which just call for lime juice, a Caipirinha calls for muddling the lime wedges in the glass, which not only juices them but also ablates the peels to extract more of the lime oil, and gives the Caipirinha a piquant, zesty edge that complements the grassiness of the Brazilian cachaça. It’s a second degree of tautness, added in addition to core sweet-sour balance, and is all the more delicious for it.

So Petraske tries this with gin. He takes gin, limes, and simple syrup, and muddles them all together with some sliced cucumbers, the juiciness of the cucumber providing the broad, juicy yin to the sharp zing of the lime oil’s yang. He shook it all on ice and emptied it into a rocks glass. Then, tripling down, he added even more tension in the form of good old salt and pepper, sprinkled into the glass, the salt deepening the savory refreshment, and the pepper further fighting back against the cucumber by providing some lingering back-of-the-mouth heat.

The result is a cocktail that you grab and that then grabs you back. It is an array of competing forces (sweet vs. sour, soft vs. sharp, crisp vs. heat) and is unusually good as a brunch drink or hangover cure—it will, at minimum, wake up your palate, and probably the rest of you with it. Gin, lime, and cucumber are intrinsically refreshing (see the Eastside Rickey for more examples of this), with the lime oil and the black pepper providing just enough resistance to be interesting. The Gordon’s Cup walks that perfect line between cerebrally engaging and viscerally delicious, inviting your attention while not demanding it. “This cocktail can be a morning kickstarter, a hangover remedy, or a refreshing nightcap,” wrote Petraske’s disciple-turned-business partner Lucinda Sterling in Regarding Cocktails, the book devoted to Petraske’s cocktail philosophy, “a true Sasha original.” 

Gordon’s Cup

Combine gin, lime, simple syrup, and cucumber slices, and lime coins in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake hard for six to eight seconds and fine strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Add lime wedges and/or cucumber slices to the glass, sprinkle a pinch or two of salt and pepper on top, stir briefly to combine, and enjoy.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Gin: This is, unsurprisingly, delicious across pretty much all styles of gin. The only note is that the spice of the black pepper made me shy away from some of the higher-proof examples, so Tanqueray reads a little hot (still good though!) as would anything Navy Strength. Far better were the lower proof juniper-forward ones like Plymouth or Beefeater, or the softer Hendrick’s or Monkey 47. It’s almost certain that whatever gin you have at home would be just fine.

Lime Wedges: As with the Caipirinha, I love the presence of lime zest but dislike the imprecision of muddling wedges. The balance of sugar and acid is pretty important, and muddling wedges will yield a cocktail that you keep having to taste and adjust. Better, for me, is to use fresh lime juice, and then cut a couple thin coins of lime skin off the lime, about the size of a nickel, and throw those into the shaker tin to get beat up with the ice. Same effect, more precision.

Cucumber Slices: This is pretty self-explanatory, but for this: Most Gordon’s Cups you’ll be served will be a pulpy soup of battered cucumbers and lime wedges. This is original, and not even bad (it, too, is a nod to the noble Caipirinha) but personally I prefer to not have so much debris in the drink, so I strain them out, and then add fresh cucumber wheels and/or lime wedges or wheels to the drink itself, giving the visual appeal but minimizing the detritus.