The John Collins is a 19th-century cocktail named for the man about whom this poem was written:
My name is John Collins, head waiter at Limmer’s,
Corner of Conduit Street, Hanover Square,
My chief occupation is filling brimmers
For all the young gentlemen frequenters there.
Mr. Frank always drinks my gin punch when he smokes.
Much research has gone into determining the precise origins of the drink, and exactly what “gin” it was served with. It can be traced at least as far back as 1850s, when historian David Wondrich notes that a gin punch by that name was making the rounds among bartenders in New York. It spawned the Tom Collins when it began to be made with Old Tom gin, and contemporary records seem to indicate that the John Collins would then have been made with genever, an older, maltier Dutch style.
Over time, the John Collins has become known almost uniformly as whiskey-based drink; how’d that happen? Simon Diffords gave us the answer, as he often does, pointing to Jones’ Complete Bar Guide from 1977: “Since Holland Gin is in few bars, Bourbon is often substituted to get the Holland Gin heavier effect.” It goes on to say that even Scotch could make a good replacement for genever’s malty flavors, so we feel confident including just about any type of whiskey as acceptable in a John Collins.
