Vodka Soda
The diet of cocktails
The anti-cocktail cocktail. Vodka's neutrality lets you taste the carbonation and lime. It shouldn't work this well.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 oz Vodka
- 4-5 oz Soda Water
- squeeze Fresh Lime Juice
Method
Fill a highball with ice. Pour vodka. Top with soda water. Squeeze lime wheel over and drop in.
A simple vodka and soda water highball with no documented single inventor. Vodka's expansion in American bartending was driven by Smirnoff's post-war marketing (Heublein acquired the brand in 1939, with aggressive growth from the 1940s onward); simple vodka highballs such as the Greyhound (first documented in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930; popularized with vodka post-WWII) and Screwdriver (WWII-era origins, cemented by Smirnoff marketing 1950s-60s) emerged during this expansion period. The vodka soda represents this broader category of spirit-soda combinations rather than an authored cocktail. Notes: a service formula rather than a named classic; structurally adjacent to the vodka tonic and other post-war vodka highballs; appears in Difford's Guide but carries no origin narrative.