Bronx Cocktail – Rediscover an Amazing Classic

Bronx Cocktail

The Bronx Cocktail yet another cocktail named for one of the five boroughs.


Bronx Cocktail
Bronx Cocktail

The Bronx Cocktail is one of those cocktails that was apparently very popular once a long time ago. Considering it was considered one of the top 10 cocktails something like a hundred years ago it really has faded into obscurity.

It is a gin cocktail made with both sweet vermouth and dry vermouth. The addition of orange juice makes it a bit of an anomaly these days. At the height of its popularity orange juice would have been an exciting and new ingredient.


Bronx Cocktail Ingredients

A Bronx Cocktail is an interesting drink. It is a perfect martini with added orange juice. A perfect martini is a martini made with both sweet and dry vermouth. That makes it very similar to Martinez with orange juice substituted for Maraschino liqueur.

It is also a spirit forward cocktail with just a touch of juice. Anytime you are making a spirit forward drink you are showcasing the ingredients. That means you really want to choose high quality ingredients for this drink.

  • London Dry Gin – Pick a gin with good flavour and complexity. The gin is the backbone of this drink. Choose one with bright citrus notes to complement the orange juice. Something like Tanqueray’s Flor de Sevilla would work well here.
  • Dry Vermouth – A fruity vermouth with good acidity will pair well with the orange juice in this cocktail. I would consider Lillet Blanc to fit the overall mood here.
  • Sweet Vermouth – A standard Torino style red vermouth works just fine.
  • Orange Juice – There really is no subsitute for fresh squeezed orange juice.

How to Make a Bronx Cocktail

This is a fairly simple cocktail. There are three simple steps and not a lot of things to figure out with this drink.

  1. Prepare your glass. In this case the traditional glass is a coupe. If you can chill it beforehand it is a nice touch.
  2. Shake. This cocktail contains citrus, so that means you are going to shake it. Fill your shaker with ice and shake for 10-15 seconds to chill and dilure.
  3. Fine Strain. Again, because this drink contains orange juice a fine strain is a nice touch. That means that in addition to straining out the ice you are going to use a second fine mesh strainer to remove orange pulp from the cocktail. That will give you an nice clear cocktail with good color.

Like I said, its a fairly simple drink to execute and it really is hard to screw it up. Use quality ingredients and fresh squeezed juice and you will be very happy with the result.

Bronx Cocktail History

This is a pre-Prohibition era cocktails. A bartender named Johnny Solon from the Astoria-Waldorf Hotel in New York is generally credited with creating this one sometime in the early 1900s. People say it was inspired by a trip to the Bronx Zoo.

Bronx Cocktail Recipe

The Bronx makes an appearance in Burke’s Complete Cocktails and Drinking Recipes in 1934. In that book it was described as the third most popular drink in the world, after the martini and the Manhattan. It’s fame was probably due to the fact that it was one of the first cocktails on the scene to use orange juice.

  • Glass: chilled coupe glass
  • 1 1/2 oz. London dry gin
  • 1 oz. fresh orange juice
  • 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
  • 1/2 oz. dry vermouth
  1. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add gin, orange juice and vermouth.
  2. Shake well.
  3. Fine strain into a chilled coupe glass.

Manhattan Cocktail Variations

The Bronx cocktail is obviously a relative of the Manhattan both in name an style. Here are a couple others to check out:

Brooklyn Cocktail – A Variation on the Manhattan

Martinez Cocktail – A Drink with Classic Heritage

Casino Cocktail

Rolls Royce Cocktail a Luxurious Sip

The 5 Boroughs Cocktails

There are 5 boroughs in New York. Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. Four of them have cocktails named after them. Collect them all, I guess?