A spare, bone-dry highball of gin, the juice and spent shell of half a lime, and a generous pour of soda — no sugar to soften its edges. It drinks like a Tom Collins with the sweetness stripped out and lime where the lemon was, the squeezed shell lending a faint bitter edge of oil to something crisp, tart, and built to be drained on a hot afternoon.
Garnish: Lime Wedge
built · Highball · On the Rocks
build
Squeeze the juice of half a lime into a highball glass and drop the spent shell in.
add
Add the gin, then fill the glass with ice.
top
Top with chilled soda water.
stir
Stir gently to combine.
garnish
Leave the lime shell in, or garnish with a lime wedge.
Its name honours Col. Joe Rickey, a Democratic lobbyist, and its first form was a bourbon drink that bartender George A. Williamson mixed for him at Shoomaker's in 1880s Washington. Gin pushed the whiskey aside during the 1890s, a shift no single person is credited with, and by 1903 Daly's Bartenders' Encyclopedia was printing an unsweetened version of Plymouth gin, lime and seltzer. The gin rickey later turns up in the seventh chapter of The Great Gatsby, and in 2011 Washington, D.C. made it the city's official cocktail.