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Gotham Grape
Put into a glass two tablespoonfuls of grape syrup and four tablespoonfuls of grape juice. Stir well and fill up the glass with soda water.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a cocktail: two sweet grape components over ice, lengthened with charged water. The proportions assume a tall fountain glass and a strong siphon.
- Grape syrupThis is fountain syrup — grape juice cooked down with sugar, not the thin bottled "grape drink" sold today. Simmering a cup of juice with a cup of sugar until it coats a spoon gives the right body.
- Grape juiceCommercial American grape juice of the period was typically pasteurised Concord, unsweetened and deep purple, with a musky flavour unlike European table grapes. Concord juice is probably the closest match; white grape juice will taste flatter here.
- Soda water"Soda water" in a fountain book means water charged under pressure at the counter, likely livelier than much bottled seltzer. Use the freshest, most strongly carbonated water you have and pour down the side of the glass to keep the fizz.
- Glass sizeNo glass volume is given. Two tablespoons syrup plus four of juice suits a 10-12 oz glass; in anything larger the grape disappears entirely.
- Order of workStir the syrup and juice together before the soda goes in, as written. Syrup that sinks to the bottom will not come back up once the glass is carbonated, and stirring afterwards knocks the gas out.
- YieldOne glass. Scaling up for a crowd works if you mix syrup and juice in a pitcher and charge each glass individually.
Books like this one belong to a period when "on the water wagon" meant sworn off drink and hosts might find themselves obliged to entertain without wine. Unfermented grape juice was the emblematic beverage of that movement: Thomas Bramwell Welch, a Methodist dentist and temperance man, began bottling pasteurised Concord juice in 1869 expressly as an unfermented communion wine, and by the 1910s his company's product was a national grocery item. The name "Gotham Grape" nods to New York, home to soda fountains — a counter with dozens of syrups and a carbonator, capable of turning two ordinary pantry ingredients into something worth ordering by name.