We often forget that there are still plenty of simple cocktail recipes waiting to be invented. Given the available ingredients, the lack of any rules about how many you can add, and the opportunity to vary proportions—the math suggests that options are practically endless. But not every combination is worth making. For example, we know there is a landscape of sweet versus sour, and the best drinks land with intent. We also know the size of our glassware and how much of a base spirit should typically go into a drink to meet expectations for flavor, strength and price. In other words, there is a important framework at play here—even with plenty of cocktail styes to build upon—that severely constrains the possible into a much smaller set of recipes that are probable. This is why we are always surprised and delighted when a simple and delicious, classic-styled recipe comes along.

I this case, the Clara Bow cocktail isn’t exactly new, having been invented by Lynnette Marrero & Jim Kearns, of the Rye House in New York in 2009. That makes it a teenager, so while it is still quite young with respect to cocktail history (and as we will see, it could not have been made in the early days) the design stems from a whiskey sour, so it’s definitely a modern classic. Let’s get into it.

Clara Bow
1.5 oz high-proof, high-rye bourbon
.75 oz lemon juice
.5 oz St-Germain
.5 grenadine
5-8 mint leaves

Build in a shaker, add ice and shake to chill. Double strain through a fine mesh strainier into a chilled cocktail coupe and garnish with a mint leaf.

There are plenty of modern twists on the whiskey sour and for good reason: it’s a great platform. You start with the basic combination of spirit, lemon and sugar, then adjust from there. Take the Bourbon Renewal, for example. It’s a modern variation that changes just part one ingredient to add a new flavor. It demonstrates the most common tweak—swap the sugar for a different syrup or maybe a liqueur. In our case, we’ve done both. Grenadine is an obvious choice and there are plenty of historic classics that are built on this theme. But here, we also split the sweet by swapping in a half-ounce of St-Germain.

Back in 2009, St-Germain, an intriguingly-flavored elderflower liqueur, had only recently been released. It quickly became the darling of the mixology world as bartenders started referring to it as “ketchup” when putting together recipes. You could literally add some to just about anything and make a decent variation, although taken too far, the flavor can be overpowering. It was in that context that the Clara Bow was born, but the use of elderflower here is subtle, and the drink is better because of that restraint.

Lynnette and Jim didn’t stop there. They also threw in some mint leaves, possibly inspired by the Whiskey Smash, or maybe the Southside cocktails. Just a handful of leaves in the bottom of the shaker as you build this drink is all that is needed. You can lightly muddle or don’t bother. The ice will cold-bruise the leaves enough to release a hint of flavor that rounds out the other ingredients much in the same way a dash of bitters adds seasoning to recipe. It is a classic technique added to a classic formula, with a contemporary twist. It’s simple, but a bit more sophisticated than a plain sour.

As for the base spirit, bourbon is called for, but a “high rye” is specified. Having rye in the mash bill for any whiskey is going to add a punch of flavor and sometimes even a peppery bite. It might sound overly-specific—and it is—but considering the fact that we already have pomegranate, elderflower, mint and lemon, it cannot hurt to pick a whiskey you can still taste among everything else, assuming you can find the grain percentages used to make it! We get it, especially considering the bar is called the Rye House. Could you use straight rye in this? Probably. We used Early Times, 100-proof which is 11% rye. That’s not as high as it could be, but we were pleased with the result.

The sip is better than a standard whiskey sour, and good grenadine will make a difference. As stated above, the St-Germain doesn’t overpower and the mint has a rounding effect. Overall, we like this one a lot and appreciate the name, Clara Bow, the New Yorker turned movie star, appeared in some 58 films in her career. Most of them were silent pictures with a box office draw that made her one of the most popular women in cinema of the 1920s. She was known as “The It Girl” of the flapper generation making the transition to “talkies” and, like this drink, became a transformative modern classic.

Try this and let us know what you think. If you enjoyed it, you should check out similar classics like the Scofflaw, the Ward 8, and the Twelve Mile Limit. Then try the Port Light, and even La Yapa.