Palm Beach

White gives you the version that makes sense of the drink: sharp and properly bitter, with enough backbone to argue with juniper. Pink and ruby are gentler, and 22ml of them can disappear under the gin. If pink is what you have, cut the vermouth to 5ml.

Less well than any other juice on the shelf. Grapefruit loses its top notes within hours, and bottled versions taste cooked and flatly bitter. Half a grapefruit yields around 60ml, enough for two drinks. Juice it, use it, and do not save the rest for tomorrow.

Taste the juice first. A sharp winter grapefruit may want 5ml of simple syrup, while a sweet summer one needs none and turns flabby if you add it. That 8ml of sweet vermouth is already sweetening more than its size suggests it would.

An amber or bianco vermouth plus 3ml of simple syrup gets close. Leaving it out altogether hands you a gin and grapefruit, which is a decent drink but a thinner one. The vermouth is the thing that stops the grapefruit tasting like breakfast.

A classic Palm Beach calls for 45 ml (1.5 oz) Gin, 8 ml (0.25 oz) Sweet vermouth, 22 ml (0.75 oz) Grapefruit juice. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A standard Palm Beach is roughly 26% ABV once mixed (before ice melt softens it further). That makes it spirit-forward — closer to a Martini than to a beer, so sip it slowly.

A Palm Beach is shaken. About 13 seconds with plenty of ice chills and dilutes it correctly.