The Buck is a variant of the Rickey combining spirits with lime juice and ginger ale. Its original and most popular version by far, the Gin Buck, is first documented in July 1903 when it is identified in a Kansas City, Missouri, newspaper as “the only new drink called for at the leading hotels in Kansas City.” Already in 1901 the New York Sun had identified gin and ginger ale as one of the new hot-weather “combinations that are called for constantly,” and Life magazine’s nostalgic 1925 recollection of pre-Prohibition “ginger-ale highballs at the bar” of the Hotel Buckingham in that city perhaps sheds some light on the drink’s name and origins, although there is no proof. (Broadway columnist O. O. McIntyre’s claim that it was invented at New York’s Hotel Van Cortlandt when it was under the management of playwright and lowlife saint Wilson Mizner is impossible, as the hotel didn’t open until September, 1903.) In any case, the Gin Buck didn’t start to gain broad popularity until the 1910s, when this “Gin Rickey with a college education,” as the New Orleans Item dubbed it, regularly appears in drink books and newspaper stories. It wasn’t until Prohibition was enacted in 1919 that it really took off, though. See
If there was one thing that American drinkers agreed on during the great drought, it was that ginger ale was the perfect mixer for bootleg liquor. From 1919 to 1933, gin and buck went together like ham and eggs. In Washington, DC, the Gin Buck was the house specialty of the Mayflower Club, the most elegant speakeasy in town, which sold them for thirty-five cents apiece, ten cents above the going rate. (For that extra dime, you got a proper splash of fresh lime juice, rather than the “few drops of lemon juice” most places used.) The drink was ubiquitous, though. Indeed, in 1926, Americans drank 1.25 billion pints of dry ginger ale; in 1918, right before prohibition, the figure was only ninety-nine million. Of course, much of that ginger ale was mixed with whisky or rum, but the Gin Buck must have accounted for a sizeable proportion of the total. After Prohibition, the drink’s popularity faded quickly, as if people wanted to forget it. The Gin Buck has not benefitted from the cocktail renaissance, but San Diego bartender Erick Castro’s bourbon-based Kentucky Buck has become something of a modern classic. See cocktail renaissance.
Recipe: Combine 60 ml London dry gin and 15 ml lime juice in a tall glass with ice. Fill with ginger ale.
See also ginger beer and ginger ale; Gin Buck; and Rickey.
“Drinks for Hot Weather.” New York Sun, July 7, 1901, 9.
“A Few Recollections of the Distant Past.” Life, May 14, 1925, 6.
“‘Gin Buck’ A New Drink.” Kansas City Star, July 25, 1903, 2.
“How ‘Dry’ America Made ‘Dry’ Ginger Ale a Billion Dollar Industry.” Helena (MT) Independent, July 29, 1928 ,18.
By: David Wondrich