Cocktail · Medium strength
Cosmopolitan
Citrus vodka, cranberry, lime — unfairly memed, secretly excellent.
How to order it: Made properly it's a tart, elegant drink. Made badly it's juice.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 1½ oz citrus vodka
- 1 oz cranberry juice
- ½ oz Cointreau
- ½ oz lime juice
- Shake; coupe; lime wheel
The story
Its paternity is contested — a Miami bartender named Cheryl Cook claimed a 1980s original, and others mixed cranberry and vodka long before — but the modern Cosmo was standardized by Toby Cecchini at Manhattan's Odeon in 1988: Absolut Citron, fresh lime, Cointreau, and just enough cranberry to blush. Dale DeGroff polished it, Madonna was photographed with one, and then Sex and the City made it the most famous cocktail on television, which was both its coronation and its undoing — a decade of bad versions buried a genuinely well-built sour. Bartenders have since quietly rehabilitated it. The Cosmopolitan endures because underneath the meme is a balanced, citrus-bright drink that always deserved better.
Adjacent pours