The Jasmine

The Jasmine is a cocktail composed of gin, lemon juice, Campari, and Cointreau, served up. The drink was developed by Paul Harrington at Townhouse Bar & Grill in Emeryville, California, in the mid-1990s, for a customer—Matt Jasmin (years later, Harrington discovered he’d misspelled Jasmin’s name when christening the drink)—who stopped by the bar after a shift at Chez Panisse, and Harrington chose to prepare a riff on the classic Pegu Club Cocktail. See Pegu Club Cocktail. Harrington substituted lemon juice for lime and used Campari in place of the Pegu Club’s two types of bitters. The second person to sample the Jasmine was Evan Shively, a chef and acquaintance, who told Harrington, “Congratulations—you’ve invented grapefruit juice.”

Recipe: Shake 45 ml gin, 22.5 ml fresh lemon juice, 7.5 ml. Cointreau, and 7.5 ml Campari with ice to chill, and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

See also Harrington, Paul.

Email communication with Paul Harrington, March 4, 2015.

Email communication with Paul Harrington, September 12, 2016.

Harrington, Paul. Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century. New York: Viking, 1998.

By: Paul Clarke