Cocktail recipe
Cosmopolitan
A polished, ruby-pink vodka sour with lively lime, orange aromatics and a crisp cranberry edge.
Ingredients
- 40 ml (1⅓ oz) citrus-flavoured vodka
- 15 ml (½ oz) orange liqueur, triple-sec style
- 15 ml (½ oz) fresh lime juice
- 30 ml (1 oz) unsweetened cranberry juice
- Garnish: 1 lemon twist
Preparation
Shake vodka, orange liqueur, lime and cranberry with ice until well chilled. Fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass and express a lemon twist over the surface.
Glassware
Chilled cocktail glass
History
The Cosmopolitan's late-20th-century history has several credible but not identical claimants. Miami bartender Cheryl Cook said she developed a cranberry-tinted citrus-vodka drink in 1985 for the Martini-glass crowd. Toby Cecchini described his 1988 Odeon version in New York, using citrus vodka, orange liqueur, lime and cranberry; that combination became highly influential. Dale DeGroff's later Rainbow Room service helped give the drink national visibility. These accounts may describe successive adaptations rather than one inventor's isolated creation. Its 1990s television and nightlife popularity came after those bar-world developments.
Mixology View
We do not award a single undisputed inventor. The Mixology version deliberately uses unsweetened cranberry juice, a drier house adjustment from the sweeter cranberry-juice-cocktail versions associated with the 1980s and 1990s.