The Boozy Drink That Was Actually Invented Because Of A Well-Known Hoax

Have you seen Tom Collins? Surely you've heard of him — the fellow at the bar talking poorly of you? If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's because the man in reference isn't a real person, but rather the star of a 150-year-old hoax (much to the chagrin of anyone with this name). In the year 1874, the great Tom Collins hoax was peak humor. Even newspapers joined the fun with false sightings of Tom in the reports.

Let's picture a scene: Your friend says, "have you seen Tom Collins?" They know you don't know anyone with that name, but they insist you do know him and that this so-called Tom Collins is talking smack about you at the local bar. Naturally, you and your friend must confront this guy... only to find out that he never existed once reaching the bar. The good news is that your honor is intact, and now you can laugh with your prankster over the full experience with gin drinks, ready to play the joke on someone else tomorrow. The only "Tom Collins" most of us are familiar with today is the eponymous gin cocktail (a mix of gin, lemon, sugar, carbonated water, and one chaotic story). The event is similar to the fake "Goncharov" movie or fake country of "Listenbourg" that became viral internet memes in the 2020s; perhaps some humor is timeless.

There's more to the tale of Tom Collins than a single joke. In fact, there's another level of irony to be appreciated about this drink. In 1887, a recipe for the Tom Collins appeared in Jerry Thomas's revered "Bar-Tender's Guide." The original recipe included whiskey, along with substitutions for brandy or gin. Thomas was a big name in New York's bar scene, which is also where the Tom Collins hoax seemed to take off — it's likely he'd have named his drink after the jest. Thomas' pupil, another legendary bartender named Harry Johnson, also published a solo Tom Collins recipe in his "New and Improved Bartender's Manual." It called for Old Tom, a type of gin with a flavor somewhere between a London dry and a genever. This Tom Collins is a close relative of the earlier John Collins and the gin fizz, which is made with egg whites and served in a shorter glass.

Johnson and Thomas were rivals with very different approaches to bartending, with the former claiming he'd written the first bartending manual before his mentor (though no evidence has been found to substantiate this claim). The genius of the Tom Collins is there's a real possibility its creators were smack-talking each other in different bars, much like the topic of the 1874 hoax. Regardless of who made it, any member of the Collins family is a dramatic gin cocktail to sip all summer long.