Spring is famously about rebirth. In the cocktail world, this means a freshly blooming crop of ingredients and bright flavors.
Chris Robertson, general manager at Koestler Prime in the Renaissance at Colony Park, said that as they prepare to release their spring menu they move from the warming and comforting cocktails of winter to something bright and refreshing.
“Spring is a time of renewal. The first words that come to my mind when putting together the spring cocktails are fresh and floral,” Robertson said.
Robertson said that when developing their seasonal drink he always likes to do a twist on a classic.
“I really love a drink that I can just tell someone about and they can make. For the most part I think old cocktails are the best so we like to put our spin on something fairly simple while using fresh, local if possible, ingredients,” Robertson said.
Robertson and his staff have developed this issue’s featured cocktail with all that in mind. The Spring Thyme Collins is a take on the classic Tom Collins cocktail.
The Tom Collins is considered one of the oldest cocktails and represents the turn in popularity from big bowls of punch to well-measured and handcrafted drinks made one at a time in the mid-1800s.
A lot has been disputed about the drink’s provenance, but cocktail historian David Wondrich maintains in his bar bible Imbibe that the drink started in London. It was a New York native theatrical manager who was known for adding ice-cold soda water to his gin punch. As this ingredient caught on first documented in the early 1830s, John Collins, headwaiter at the Limmer’s Hotel, made his own version that, known as Collin’s Punch, that would be taken worldwide by the hotel’s elite clientele.
As it was mixed throughout American taverns, the ingredient list was streamlined and by the time it was recorded in Jerry Thomas’ cocktail book in 1876, it became known as the “Tom Collins.”
What?!
No explanation is given for the name change but Wondrich theorizes that the widespread use of Old Tom gin in the drink may have been a contributing factor.
Wondrich says that Thomas recorded the drink just as a related “bit of tomfoolery began crisscrossing the nation.”
The bar prank involved sending an easily provoked bar patron to another bar on a wild goose chase looking for “Mr. Collins,” who had allegedly been spreading nasty rumors about the provoked man.
Patrons in the know would tell the irate individual that he had “just missed Collins, but he said he was going to another bar around the corner,” and so on and so forth. I’m sure it was very funny unless you were the easily provoked man.
All that to say, Robertson acknowledges the playful energy of the drink. With warm weather and outdoor activities on the horizon, he expects patrons to make use of the Renaissance’s new “go cup” laws passed last February.
“We embrace the go cup ordinance. I think with Local 463 we are kind of ‘brother and sister’ restaurants and we expect people to enjoy the many events renaissance has to offer and I hope we can contribute to that experience,” Robertson said. “This is absolutely an outdoor drinker.”
Spring Thyme Collins
1 1/2 oz. Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin
1/2 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 oz. cane sugar simple syrup
1 sprig of thyme
Soda water
Give the ingredients a gentle stir with ice and pour into a collins glass. Garnish with thyme. top with soda which Robertson says make it “light and effervescent.”
