This drink really is called a Porto Rico. It’s not a typo, or a quirk of the mixology lexicon. It’s because as far as the U.S. government was concerned, that’s how Puerto Rico was spelled. Until 1932 anyway, when Congress “back corrected” all their legislative and judicial records and replaced the anglicized version of the name with it’s correct Spanish spelling.
See that? You come for vintage cocktail recipes, and you get snippets of historical trivia as well.
Ingredients:
Add gin, lime juice, raspberry syrup and ice cube to a HIGH BALL glass. Fill with charged water. Stir once, and serve with a small spoon.
Notes:
No shaking here, just a single stir to combine everything. The drink is built in the glass it’s served in. Caulkins calls for a HIGH BALL — his held 6 oz. That’s the same as an old fashioned, so I used that, and ended up adding around 3 ½ oz of charged (seltzer) water.
While this drink looks like pink lemonade; it is, of course really a sweet fizzy limeade. The lime juice comes through beautifully, the raspberry dims the acidic citrus just slightly — but adds its own sweetness — and then there’s a hint of juniper at the end (that’d be the gin). Bright and refreshing, like a sunshiny day in Porto, er. . . Puerto Rico.