A floral, violet-tinted gin sour in strict equal parts, shaken cold and served up, it pours a soft lilac and opens perfumed and gently sweet before fresh lemon snaps it back into bright balance. Think of a Last Word with orange liqueur where the maraschino was and crème de violette in place of the Chartreuse, finished with the fragrant oil of an expressed orange peel.
Garnish: Orange Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine the gin, Triple Sec, crème de violette, and lemon juice in a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until thoroughly chilled.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe.
garnish
Express an orange peel over the surface and use as garnish.
The Water Lily belongs to the modern craft-cocktail era, and the open record attaches no inventor, bar or year to it. It is best understood as one of the many equal-parts sours of that period, built on the same four-way template as the Corpse Reviver No. 2. Being so recent, it does not turn up in the public-domain cocktail books of earlier generations. It is recorded alongside two related variations, the White Lily and the Moonlight.