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A Gimlet in a coupe glass with a pale green tint and a lime wheel garnishPhoto by alleksana on Pexels
sourdrystrong

Gimlet

Gin and lime cordial, stirred cold and clean — a short, tart classic with naval roots.

Difficulty
medium
Prep time
4 min
Strength
28.6% ABV
Glassware
Coupe glass
Base
gin
Serves
1

Ingredients

  • Gin
    50ml
  • Lime cordial

    Rose's-style sweetened lime cordial, not fresh lime juice

    20ml

Garnish: Lime wheel

Scale for a party

Method

  1. Add the gin and lime cordial to a mixing glass filled with ice.
  2. Stir for 20–30 seconds until well chilled.
  3. Strain into a chilled coupe glass.
  4. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Mixing glass

    Household swap: Any sturdy glass or small jug works for stirring.

  • Jigger

    Household swap: A tablespoon measure (1 tbsp ≈ 15ml) is a fair substitute.

Missing an ingredient?

Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.

  • Instead of Lime Cordial

    Best substitute: Lime Juice (or Simple Syrup)

    This is the sweet element in this drink.

    Quantity: Use 15ml fresh lime juice plus 10ml simple syrup in place of the cordial

    Flavour impact: Produces a fresher, less floral drink closer to a small gin sour — arguably the more common modern version.

    What changes

    Lime Juice moves the drink a long way — less sweetness, more acidity, more bitterness, more intensity and less texture. This is worth making deliberately rather than as a stand-in.

    Sweetness ↓
    Less sweetness leaves the acid and the spirit more exposed, so the drink will taste sharper and drier than it should.
    Acidity ↑
    More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
    Bitterness ↑
    Bitterness builds across a drink rather than announcing itself, so this will read as a longer, drier finish.
    Intensity ↑
    A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
    Texture ↓
    The swap takes weight out of the drink, so it will feel thinner even where the flavour is close.
    Character
    you lose tart-sweet, lime, concentrated and tangy, and you gain tart, bright, acidic and zesty. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Add a little more syrup, a small amount at a time, until the edges come back together.
    • Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
    • Pour slightly less, or lengthen the drink a little, and let the sweetness catch up.
    • Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
    • A slightly richer syrup, or a shorter dilution, puts some of the body back.
    High confidenceThis is the standard modern reinterpretation of the classic cordial-based recipe.Makes a different drinkBecomes a variation

Make it better

  • Chill the coupe glass in the freezer beforehand — this drink is served up, so it has no ice to keep it cold.
  • Use a London Dry-style gin; its juniper-forward profile holds up best against the sweet-tart cordial.
  • If your cordial is very sweet, add a squeeze of fresh lime juice to sharpen the balance.
  • Stir, don't shake — stirring keeps a spirit-forward drink clear and silky instead of cloudy with air bubbles.

Rescue this drink

Too sweet
Cut the cordial to 15ml and add a splash of fresh lime juice.
Too sharp or bitter
Add a touch more cordial — the classic ratio leans sweeter than most modern sours.
Tastes weak
Stir for a shorter time, or use a larger ice cube to slow dilution.
So cold you cannot taste itgeneral guidance
Spirit-forward drinks served up have a window: too warm and the alcohol burns, too cold and the aromatics stop volatilising and the drink reads as flat and numb. If it arrives correct and improves over the first few minutes, you have over-chilled it — shorten the stir slightly rather than skipping the freezer glass, because a warm glass ruins more drinks than a cold one.
Cloudy when it should be cleargeneral guidance
Stirring aerates far less than shaking, and clarity is the whole reason to stir. A hazy stirred drink means it was stirred too hard, stirred with broken or wet ice, or shaken by mistake. Move the spoon around the wall of the glass rather than through the middle, and use whole dry cubes.
Too stronggeneral guidance
Stir or shake for a little longer to add dilution, or add a splash of chilled water. This is a spirit-forward drink by design, so some strength is expected.
Too sourgeneral guidance
Add a little more sweetener (simple syrup or the cocktail's usual sweetening ingredient), a small amount at a time.
Served too warmgeneral guidance
Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
Under-diluted (tastes harsh or too concentrated)general guidance
For one serving, stir in a few drops of chilled water to open it up. For a batch, extend the stir time slightly on the next round.

Make ahead & storage

Batches well

Everything in this can be mixed days ahead and kept cold. It is one of the drinks to build a party menu around.

What it tastes like

The taste, and what drives it

off-dry, very sharp, light — a sour-structured drink served straight up, no ice.

Off-dry

Dry → Sweet

Sweetened enough to take the edge off without reading as a sweet drink.

What drives it: Lime cordial — carries the most sugar into the glass.

Very sharp

Soft → Sharp

Bracingly sour — the first sip is meant to wake you up.

What drives it: Lime cordial — supplies the acidity.

Light

Light → Rich

Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.

What drives it: Gin — adds most of the weight.

Very bold

Delicate → Bold

Very bold — concentrated, and served small for that reason.

What drives it: Gin — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • Citrus peelLeads

    From Gin, Lime cordial, Lime wheel

  • Juniper and botanicalsLeads

    From Gin

Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.

How it was worked out

Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.

How balance actually works →

If it isn't right

What goes wrong with this drink, and why

Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.

  • It's too sweet

    Likely cause
    Lime cordial is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
    What to change
    Cut lime cordial by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
    What that does
    The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced. That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds.

  • It's too sour

    Likely cause
    Lime cordial varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
    What to change
    Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
    What that does
    Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight. Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry above instead.

  • It's too strong

    Likely cause
    Gin dominates by design here — this is a drink built to be sipped, and it is under-diluted more often than it is over-poured.
    What to change
    Stirring for longer, or add a measured 5–10ml of water. Both are the same correction; one is just more honest about it.
    What that does
    Alcohol heat drops and the aromatics open up — a slightly diluted spirit-forward drink usually smells better, not worse.

  • It's watery

    Likely cause
    Stirring adds water while it chills, and the two cannot be separated. Wet ice from a freezer door, or small cubes, will over-dilute before the drink is properly cold.
    What to change
    Use bigger, drier, colder ice and stop sooner. Chilling the glass first buys you time you would otherwise spend diluting.
    What that does
    More flavour concentration at the same temperature. Under-dilute instead and the drink will taste harsh — this is a target, not a direction.

  • It doesn't smell of anything

    Likely cause
    This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel and juniper and botanicals, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
    What to change
    Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
    What that does
    More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.

  • It tastes one-dimensional

    Likely cause
    With 2 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a sour-structured drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
    What to change
    Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
    What that does
    More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.

Taste profile

Sweetness
2/5
Sourness
4/5
Bitterness
0/5
Strength
4/5
Fruitiness
1/5
Freshness
3/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate onlyCordial sugar content varies noticeably by brand.
Calories
150 kcal
Sugar
9 g
Carbohydrates
10 g
Alcohol units (UK)
2
US standard drinks
1.13
ABV
28.6%
Serving size
70 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~111 kcal from alcohol, ~39 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 113–188 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Based on 50ml gin at 40% ABV and 20ml standard sweetened lime cordial.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Fresh Lime Gimlet

    Replace the cordial with 15ml fresh lime juice and 10ml simple syrup for a brighter, more citrus-forward drink.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A stirred build: a sour-structured gin-based drink, served straight up, no ice — silky and dense in the mouth.

Sour-structured

Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.

  • Base

    Gin

    Spirit in the largest measure — read as the base.

  • Sweet element

    Lime cordial

    A cordial rather than a plain syrup (acidity 3/5) — it sweetens and sours at once, which is why a Gimlet needs nothing else.

Drinks built this way are collected as the Sour family.

2 components' roles areworked out from the ingredient's category and recorded taste attributes rather than set by hand — the reasoning is shown above so you can disagree with it.

Technique

stirred

The liquid is moved around the ice rather than against it, so it chills and dilutes with almost no air incorporated and almost no ice broken up.

A heavy, silky, completely clear drink. Alcohol reads more sharply than in the same drink shaken, because nothing has softened it.

What it ruins: Nothing outright, but it will not combine egg, dairy or thick syrup — those need force.

Everything about stirring →How the technique works →

Dilution

During mixing, then strained

Water from ice typically makes up around 25% of the finished drink for a stirred build (commonly 20–30%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.

Why dilution is an ingredient →

Served

Straight up, no ice

Coupe glass · 70ml

Chilled during mixing and then strained away from the ice, so it arrives at its coldest and most concentrated and warms from the first sip — which is why 70ml is the right size for it.

Texture and aroma

Silky and dense

Stirred without aeration, the drink stays heavy and slightly viscous in the mouth.

No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.

Where to go from here

Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.

Where it comes from

Origin and family

Origin of the Gimlet

British naval-linked gin and lime cocktail, popularised in the early 20th century.

Family

Sour

2 parts spirit · 1 part citrus · 1 part sweetener — shaken, strained, served up or over ice.

On drinks history

Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.

History and culture →

Try this next

Use up your ingredients

Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

Recipe confidence

Well-documented classic, though modern bars often substitute fresh lime for the cordial.

High confidence