The History of Julie Reiner’s Gin Blossom Cocktail

Today, classic cocktails are part of the everyday lexicon of American mixology. But in 2008, when Food & Wine published the recipe for the Gin Blossom, the classic cocktail revival was just underway. One of the originators of this burgeoning movement was the Gin Blossom’s creator, New York bar owner and author Julie Reiner, who brought her artisan sensibility to a profession that had been cruising in the bottled-mixers lane for too long. 

A native of Hawaii who grew up pulling fruit off backyard trees for her parents’ cocktail parties, Reiner learned the importance of excellent ingredients behind the bar at San Francisco’s Red Room in the 1990s. When she moved to New York with her wife and future business partner, Susan Federoff, she quickly gained a reputation with experts like Dale DeGroff, author of The Craft of the Cocktail, who was astounded to find a bartender mixing drinks with real juice at the West Village’s C3 bar.

In 2003, Reiner opened her own establishment, Flatiron Lounge, an instant hit built around an Art Deco bar and cocktails cribbed from 19th-century cocktail books. Poring over vintage volumes, Reiner recalls “all these old recipes calling for ingredients that were no longer made.” 

At least, that’s what she thought. Reiner was getting ready to bring homemade tinctures and old-timey vibes to Brooklyn with her new place, Clover Club, when Eric Seed, the founder of the Alpine-focused import company Haus Alpenz, came around quizzing her. If she could have any defunct bar products, what would she want? “Then [Seed] would go back to Europe and look for the things the cocktail nerds of New York would dream of,” says Reiner. Those classic books were filled with vague references to apricot brandy. Whether it was sweetened, aged, unsweetened, or unaged, the authors didn’t say. “So apricot liqueur and eau-de-vie were two of the things we talked about.”

Seed discovered a source in Günter Purkhart, an Austrian producer whose brandies, including his Blume Marillen Apricot Eau-de-Vie, were smoother and more fragrant than others. Purkhart’s elixirs were the spark Reiner needed. “I work best when I’m limited to a particular ingredient,” she says. “I was working on the opening menu at Clover Club, and I wanted a martini and a Manhattan variation.” She hoped they’d be modern classics that would stay on the menu forever. Reiner used the apricot liqueur in a Manhattan riff, The Slope, and the eau-de-vie in the Gin Blossom martini.

Based on the original 50 /50 formula for a martini, the Gin Blossom includes equal parts gin and sidekick — in this case, even pours of the eau-de-vie and blanc vermouth. “I wanted to create a martini that was approachable for people who aren’t used to martinis,” says Reiner. The sweet, aromatized white wine mellows the drink. And the apricot eau-de-vie? “I knew it would add a fruity backbone.”

As bone-dry as the eau-de-vie is, its hallmark is its intense apricot-ness. “It takes a lot of fruit to distill down to one bottle,” says Seed. You literally smell the orchard. Bartenders lean on eau-du-vie “to add aromatics without the sweetness.” That profile, Reiner felt, wouldn’t work with just any gin. “Eau-de-vie is nuanced and subtle. It’s going to get overwhelmed if you hit it with a big London dry gin, an aged spirit, or a funky rum,” says Alpenz salesperson Damon Dyer, who “made thousands of Gin Blossoms” when he worked at Clover Club back in the day.

Reiner instead chose citrus-forward Plymouth gin to create what she calls “a martini for the masses.” She distinguished the Gin Blossom from the elbows-out booziness of the classic cocktail revival of the mid-aughts. “We were all leaning into big flavors,” says Dyer. “But not Julie. Those drinks are really subtle.” The subtlety comes from the dilution, too. At Clover Club, they stir the Gin Blossom on ice for 30 seconds before serving it in a Nick and Nora glass with a sidecar of the same for refills.

Built for broad appeal, the Gin Blossom proved hugely popular. “It hasn’t ever come off the menu,” says Reiner, “and it’s been written about all over the place.” Yet, as is often the case with an iconic recipe, “it’s been incorrectly put out there, even in the 2008 F&W article, which called for a lemon twist instead of orange.” The fragrant oils in the orange peel tie the whole drink together. 

If you ask Reiner if she’d change anything about the Gin Blossom now, the answer is no. Why should she? Not that much hasn’t changed in mixology, or for Reiner, since the drink’s 2008 debut. She’s continued to open bars, including The Saloon, an events space next to Clover Club, and Milady’s, a reprisal of a famed ’90s New York City bar.

The Gin Blossom can’t be had at Milady’s. “That is exclusively a Clover Club classic,” says Reiner. It is also a liquid testament to the moment when American mixology rediscovered creativity. “The whole point about classic cocktails is we knew what we knew, and what we didn’t we made up as we went along,” says Dyer. “Sometimes it worked out great — sometimes, not so much.” 

The Gin Blossom is one of the brainstorms that worked out great — both professionally and personally for Reiner. As she asserts, “It is my wife’s favorite drink in the whole world.”