Tom Collins

The Tom Collins is one of the oldest and plainest of the great gin drinks — a sparkling gin sour stretched long with soda, served tall over ice and dressed with lemon and a cherry. It is essentially a gin sour lengthened into a highball, mouth-watering and refreshing rather than spirit-forward, and it gives its name to the whole Collins family of fizzy, citrus-and-soda long drinks. Named for the Old Tom gin it was first built on, it has been a summer-terrace standard since the middle of the nineteenth century.