DISSECTING A COCKTAIL

In the fall of 1988, bartender Toby Cecchini was working at The Odeon in New York City, chatting with his co-worker Melissa about her previous night out with friends. They were visiting from San Francisco and introduced her to a cocktail that was making its way across the gay bar scene.

“It’s called The Cosmopolitan,” she said. “Wanna see it?”

“Why not?” replied Cecchini.

She proceeded to make him a cocktail with vodka, Rose’s lime juice, Rose’s grenadine, and a twist of lemon. Oh, that’s cute, Cecchini recalls thinking.

“It was in one of those V-shaped martini stems (very of the times), and I thought that it was funny, because you don’t put cocktails in a martini glass, you only put a martini in a martini glass,” Cecchini said on the podcast Cocktail College. “I thought that was clever — and it was very cute — but it was disgusting. It was Rose’s, fake, cloying, lime cordial and Rose’s grenadine, which is even worse; just simple syrup artificially colored red . . . And I thought, I can make that better.”

So, he did. “Because we made our margaritas with Cointreau and fresh lime juice, I thought, oh, there’s the base, and Absolut had just come out with Absolut Citron — it was the first flavored vodka that we had ever seen, and it was absolutely mind-blowing.” For the red coloring, Cecchini decided to use cranberry juice, since he was used to making Cape Codders all day long. He made it for the servers at The Odeon, and it quickly became the staff drink.

Word of mouth had regulars at the bar asking for “Toby’s drink.” Soon random guests and celebrities began asking for his Cosmopolitan. “Madonna would come in for lunch several times a week and ask for the ‘pink drink,’” he says. And the rest is history: The Cosmopolitan became an instant hit in the bartending community and even had a resurgence a decade later when it was glorified in the Sex in the City series.

Here are Cecchini’s exact specs. Feel free to change the vodka if you’d like, or even the garnish (perhaps a twist of orange?), but do not change the orange liqueur or cranberry juice — Cointreau and Ocean Spray all the way.