The original Tom Collins was born out of the John Collins, which was named for John Collin, who was the headwaiter of Limmer’s Old House. The house punch was a gin punch topped with soda. This is my imagined take on what the fictitious Alistair Collin might have made as an improvement on his brother’s punch recipe.

The 1870s heralded the arrival of the Tom Collins in the world of American mixology, which itself had entered a new phase, one of codification through cocktail manuals. Though the Collins is commonly thought of as being served over generous amounts of ice, in this period (1875-1919), it’s often served like a Fizz (sans ice)–another drink that made a splash at this time. There’s also a fair amount of lime during this period, whether it’s split with lemon or on its own.

The Tom Collins had yet another life after World War II. That’s like four lives now! The postwar suburbanization of the United States, combined with the lasting effects of Prohibition, severely narrowed the once-massive canon of American drinks–but the Collins remained. In this period, it solidified into the classic form we know today; meanwhile, the John Collins ditched genever in favor of American whiskey. I added the Angostura bitters based on a 1949 recipe from the Esquire Handbook for Hosts.

Mary’s cousin Colin believes he will always be ill, but Mary and Dickon bring him and his household back to life! Though this drink is non-alcoholic, I took inspiration from the John & Tom Collins, a family of drinks that sometimes called for genever as a base. Sort of a very complex strawberry-rhubarb lemonade, a nod to lemonades as one of the most important teetotal categories in drinks history.

The Americano mightn’t be just a lengthened Mi-To as previously assumed, but rather a genre of drink that combined vermouth with various liqueurs, especially aperitivo and amaro. Fernet-Branca was a popular option, but Campari won out by the ‘30s.

There was a period of time in the life of the Spritz, where the bubbly and wine elements were still kept separate, i.e. still wine and soda were used in concert to create a similar effect. Both of the lesser-known spritzes we’re highlighting this week are built this way. The Bicicletta combines white wine, Campari, and soda, and dates from around the 1930s.

Tom Bullock features quite a few fizzy cocktails in his book, but I particularly love the Twilight Cocktail, which is an unsweetened mixture of Bourbon, Italian vermouth, lime and seltzer. I take the edge off the sour notes with our cordial, sink the vermouth to the bottom, and insist on Club soda over seltzer here—the hint of salt is just what this drink needs.

Based on two great drinks of the early twentieth century ― the Elk's (Club) Fizz from the Hoffman House book and the Chicago Fizz, which made its way to the Waldorf-Astoria Bar sometime before Prohibition. In both, the basic fizz template is at play, with the great addition of some aromatized, fortified wine working in concert with aged spirit, citrus, sugar, egg white and soda.