Applejack — apple brandy — gives this sour its backbone, laced with grenadine and brightened by fresh lime until it settles into a rosy blush in a chilled coupe. It drinks tart and orchard-bright, the brandy's baked-apple warmth carrying through the snap of the lime while the grenadine rounds every edge with a soft, fruity sweetness.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine the apple brandy, lime juice, and grenadine in a shaker.
shake
Add ice and shake hard until well chilled.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe, served straight up.
garnish
Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
The drink took hold in the bars of New York and New Jersey in the early 1900s, but nobody can claim its invention with certainty. A 1905 item in the National Police Gazette gave the credit to Frank J. May, a New Jersey bartender, while other stories point to Newark restaurateur Joseph P. Rose or to Harvey's Restaurant in Washington — yet the explanation most often offered is simply applejack plus the rose tint the grenadine lends it. Its popularity carried through the 1920s and 1930s, and Hemingway's Jake Barnes drinks one in The Sun Also Rises (1926).