A tart, rosy rye sour in which grapefruit juice brings a bracing, faintly bitter edge and a measure of grenadine lends both its blush and a soft pomegranate sweetness. Shaken hard and served up, it drinks bright and bitter-sweet, the spice of the rye holding the fruit in check all the way to a clean, dry finish.
Garnish: Grapefruit Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine rye whiskey, grapefruit juice, and grenadine in a shaker.
shake
Add cracked ice and shake well until chilled.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe.
garnish
Optionally express a grapefruit peel over the surface and drop it in.
The Blinker's earliest known printing is in Patrick Gavin Duffy's The Official Mixer's Manual of 1934, yet it surfaced almost at once in other American books too — Irvin S. Cobb's Own Recipe Book that same year and Cocktails Recommended by Calvert in 1935 — so no one person can be credited with it. Those early recipes asked simply for American whiskey, naming brands such as Four Roses and Calvert, and Bill Kelly was still printing a bourbon version in The Roving Bartender in 1946. Decades later modern bartenders brought it back, and Ted Haigh's 2004 book Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails swapped raspberry syrup in for the grenadine — a change many later recipes have followed.