THE PALM BEACH SPECIAL: A CLASSIC REVAMPED
Long before craft cocktail menus and Instagram ready garnishes - Palm Beach had a drink of its own. The Palm Beach Special is a Prohibition era classic. Built from nothing more than gin, sweet vermouth, and grapefruit juice - a simple and citrus forward sipper poured in the hotel bars that lined the coast during Florida’s first tourist boom.
THE HISTORY
In 1903, tonic entrepreneur Dr. James Munyon opened the Hotel Hygeia on his own island in the Lake Worth Lagoon, bottling his Munyon’s Paw-Paw elixir for the same wintering elite who filled Palm Beach’s grand new hotels. A few miles south, those same hotel bars were already serving the elegant gin & citrus drinks that would later inspire the classic Palm Beach Special.
THE ORIGINAL
2.5 oz. GIN
.5 oz. SWEET VERMOUTH
1 oz. GRAPEFRUIT JUICE
It’s a straightforward AND spirit forward drink - three ingredients, no garnish to speak of, and built for an era of people that enjoyed their cocktails simple. THE RE-CREATION
We went back to both pieces of that history and rebuilt the drink around them. Munyon’s Paw-Paw - revived in the spirit of the original & historic elixir - replaces the sweet vermouth with the ratio bumped up so it reads as a real second act in the glass rather than a background note. That shift brings in more citrus, and a rounder & more complex flavor than the vermouth ever gave the original.
The gin changes as well. In place of a standard London Dry, we are using a purple gin. The gin gets its color the natural way - steeped with butterfly pea flower, which gives it the deep indigo-violet base before it even hits the shaker. That’s the obvious payoff here - the classic cocktail was muddy and pale, while the re-created version gives the drink a vivid hue that actually looks like its namesake Palm Beach.
Adjusting the proportions from the original and pulling the gin back a bit rebalances the whole cocktail - instead of one spirit dominating, all three ingredients get a real say.
THE REVAMPED
1.5 oz. EMPRESS 1908 INDIGO GIN
1 oz. MUNYON’S PAW-PAW FLORIDA APERITIF
1 oz. FRESH GRAPEFRUIT JUICE
Shake with ice, fine strain into a chilled coupe glass, and garnish with an expressed grapefruit twist.SAME THREE INGREDIENT BONES AS THE ORIGINAL - SAME PALM BEACH ROOTS - JUST FRESHER, BRIGHTER, AND A LITTLE MORE FLAVOR COMPLEX THAN THE VERSION THAT HAS BEEN SITTING IN OLD COCKTAIL BOOKS FOR A CENTURY - CHEERS TO THE PALM BEACH SPECIAL
- IT'S WHAT WE DO AT BOOTLEGGREG COCKTAIL CO. -