AKA the Raymond Chandler Gimlet
“We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor’s and drank gimlets. ‘They don’t know how to make them here,’ he said. ‘What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.'”
This truly is a great recipe if you drink as much as Chandler did and need something simple to just keep knocking ‘em back and not worry about dumb things like ratios and recipes to keep you from your drinking. But, it is a bit tart. Here’s Chandler’s recipe and if you find it too tart you can call an audible and switch up the ratios of gin/lime to 2/1 (which is what we suggest).
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ oz Gin
- 1 ½ oz Lime Juice
Instructions:
- Pour gin and lime juice into a mixing glass filled with ice.
- Stir well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Can also be served on the rocks in an tumbler glass.
- Add a lime wedge as a garnish if you want to be civilized.
Notes:
If you make this thing 2 parts gin / 1 part lime juice, it’s a solid drink. The other way is too sour for my liking.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, Raymond Chandler was a late bloomer. After losing his job as an oil industry executive at the age of 44, (because of his drinking) Chandler started writing fiction and the world is better for it.
His style has been mimicked by many writers but few have done better than the OG, Raymond Chandler. He wrote 8 novels, all with Private Detective Phillip Marlowe as the main protagonist. He also earned two Academy Award nominations as a screenwriter for the two Film Noir classics, Double Indemnity (1944) and The Blue Dahlia (1946).
Funny story about The Blue Dahlia. Chandler promised the producer John Houseman that he was 100% sober when he started turning his half-written novel into a screenplay for Paramount. But about half way through, Chandler got writer’s block and he was so stuck he told Houseman he had to jump off the wagon if they wanted the script done on time.
Houseman was cool with it and for the final leg of shooting (they were shooting without a complete script, yeah it was a tight deadline) Chandler wrote from home out of his gourd. Later, Chandler earned an Oscar nod and Houseman found out Chandler was never sober to begin with. It was just a ploy to stay home and get hammered.
Further reading:
Here’s an article by the LA Times about Sam Marlowe who may have been the inspiration for both Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. Regardless, a black Private Eye in 1920s Hollywood, that’s interesting. Also, last I heard the CW is possibly going to make a show about him and they better not fuck it up if they do.
