'Sour' cocktails are more varied -- and familiar -- than you might think

It's long baffled me how two of the most essential flavors - sour and salty - came to be associated with bad moods. Tasting food, the only criticism I level more frequently than "this dish needs more acid" is "this dish needs more salt." Each is essential, providing its own kind of brightening and binding, lifting and highlighting the flavors around it. Yet with people, both "salty" and "sour" have evolved to describe anger or unpleasantness. It must be based on facial reactions-the pinched grimace of a person who has taken a bite of lemon echoing the pinched scowl of someone who wants to speak with the manager.

A sour person is someone to avoid. A sour in the cocktail world, though, is something to embrace.

You probably already are. Perusing all the drink recipes throughout Philip Greene's new book "Sours: A History of the World's Most Storied Cocktail Style," I was reminded that this is a category loaded with beloved classics, a drink dynasty whose legacy has been partially obscured by its most famous family members. Sure, the Whiskey Sour and the Amaretto Sour are up front about it, but other family members go incognito. We know that Nic Cage is really a Coppola, that Angelina Jolie was born a Voight, that horror-novel prince Joe Hill is descended from the King. But does everyone clinking their Cosmopolitans and Collinses, getting their Last Words in, mixing up their margaritas and mai tais and mojitos, know that these drinks are part of the vast extended Sour family?

This is Greene's fifth cocktail book, and in researching the sour category, he saw similarities to what he'd explored in his earlier book while deconstructing the Manhattan, when he'd recognized that the drink was "a three-part platform - spirit, vermouth, or some fortified or aromatized wine, and bitters," a format that has now been tinkered with endlessly.

The sour, he says, is another classic trinity: At its simplest, it's a ratio of strong (the base spirit), sweet (sugar, syrup or liqueur) and sour (citrus juice, typically lime or lemon). "And how many drinks have come out of that platform?" he says. "The basic sours, the sparkling sours like the Tom Collins and the whole Collins family, all the tiki drinks, the fizzes - so many drinks have been spawned from those three."

I asked him whether these drinks might need a rebranding. After all, the cocktails known as sours are far more than just tart. They're little tightrope acts - beautifully balanced.

The term was a subject of discussion when it came to the title of his book, Greene says. The original title was going to be "Sweet, Strong, Sour," he says, but the publishers decided just to call it "Sours."

"And I thought, okay, it is a little risky - but more and more people like sour beer and kombucha," he says. "People have come to understand that sour isn't just like, 'Why would I suck on a lemon?' Once you recognize that 'sour' is just a name that's been in use for 175 years … then it's like, let's dig in."

One of the most perfect examples of the simple sour is the daiquiri, which, aside from ice, is nothing more than rum, sugar and lime juice. But because of that simplicity, every ingredient matters - the choice of rum, the form of the sugar, how much time has passed since the juice was squeezed - and the proportions are critical to get right. It's why many cocktail cognoscenti treat the daiquiri as their test drink when they visit a new watering hole, ordering the classic sour to take the measure of the bar and the person standing behind it. The daiquiri's closest cousin, the gimlet, is a similarly exacting sour with gin as its base; the margarita, with its little touch of triple sec, falls into a sour subcategory known as a daisy. (Daisies are sours in which the sweetener is orange liqueur.)

Greene digs into all these taxonomies in the book: the simple sour vs. the New Orleans sour; the sparkling sour and the Collins, the fizz, the mule, the crusta, the sling, the fix and the swizzle. And he pairs the education with recipes that translate theory into delicious practice. You'll learn so many drinks, so many names. Just take it slow, or you won't be able to pronounce them by the end.

(Given all the classic citrus drinks that turn out to be sours or variations of sours, I started wondering if there was any drink with citrus in it that isn't some sort of sour. One that I've concluded doesn't qualify is the Cement Mixer, the recipe for which was likely unearthed in the same archaeological dig where the figure of the demon Pazuzu was discovered in "The Exorcist." A shot of Irish cream liqueur and lime juice – yes, it curdles - it doesn't fit the sour mold, unless there's a Sickly Sour subcategory Greene failed to mention. It's also not fit for human consumption. But I digress.)

The roots of all these individual glasses of tangy deliciousness, Greene's book makes clear, is a larger receptacle: The punch bowl, in which the elements of strong, sweet and sour long swirled. Punch was well-established by the mid-1600s, a communal drink, and when it was served everyone understood that you were going to hang out until the bowl was empty. But "as we got into the Industrial Revolution, as people wanted individualized drinks where they could have one and go, you saw the cocktail," Greene says. "It was logical for people to say 'We like punch, let's make it on a smaller scale.' And that's where sours started to appear. The first time we saw them in writing was in the 1850s, but I'm sure they were out there before that, maybe just not called sours."

The rise of the individual cocktail was the rise of a different kind of drinking culture than we had in the days of the communal punch bowl, Greene says. The cocktail is to punch as a game of pickup basketball is to a round of golf. It's accepted that "you can go shoot hoops with your buddies and then you gotta go," Greene says. "But no one goes out and plays 6 holes of golf."

Whether you're making a large-format punch for a crowd or just kicking back with your own personal sour after work, it's an "easy category to master if you understand ratios," says Greene. "It can give you ideas to fuel your imagination and innovation when you want to try something at home."

Or, if you're not feeling like experimenting, stick with one of the many classics in the book. Greene is particularly partial to both the bright, minty Southside and the Bee's Knees, both of which he cites as examples of drinks that may persuade committed gin-haters to give the spirit another look. "If you serve the Southside to somebody who says, 'I can't drink gin, I had a bad night in college drinking gin,' it can change their mind."

A drink that changes minds! Who could be sour - or salty - about that?

Southside Cocktail

This classic gin sour, bright with lemon and lime juices and herbal with fresh mint, makes an ideal cocktail for the warmer months. It may even convert the most confirmed gin-haters, according to cocktail writer Philip Greene.

Servings: 1 (makes 1 drink)

Active time: 5 mins. Total time: 10 mins, plus 1 hour for chilling, if making simple syrup
Storage: Refrigerate the simple syrup for up to 2 months.
Make ahead: The simple syrup needs to be prepared and chilled at least 1 hour in advance.

For the simple syrup
•1 cup granulated sugar
•1 cup water

For the drink
• Ice
• 2 ounces London dry gin
• 1/2 ounce simple syrup
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
• 6 fresh mint leaves plus 1 mint sprig, for garnish

DIRECTIONS

Make the simple syrup: In a small (1- to 2-quart) pot over medium-high heat, combine the sugar and water, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, let cool until warm, then transfer to a lidded jar or bottle and refrigerate until completely chilled, about 1 hour. You should have about 1 1/2 cups.

Make the drink: Chill a coupe glass in the freezer for 5 minutes.

When ready to serve, fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice, then add the gin, simple syrup, lemon and lime juices, and mint leaves. Shake hard to chill, dilute and crush the mint, about 20 seconds, then double-strain (pour from the strainer lid of a cocktail shaker through a fine-mesh sieve) into the chilled coupe. Slap the mint sprig between your palms to release the aromatics, then fluff it up, garnish the drink and serve.

Variations: To convert this to a Southside Fizz, serve the drink over ice in a highball glass, top off with club soda or seltzer, and garnish with the mint sprig.If you don’t have simple syrup on hand, use 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar when combining the ingredients, then shake and double-strain into a chilled coupe.

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