The Tom Collins: How to Make Summer 2026's Most Refreshing Gin Cocktail (and the 8 Gins That Make It Sing)
If a gin and tonic is the cocktail you reach for without thinking, the Tom Collins is the one you make when you want people to think you know what you are doing — which is funny, because it is just as easy. Gin, fresh lemon, a little sugar, soda water over ice in a tall glass. That is the entire drink. It has been called a sparkling gin lemonade, and that is exactly right: bright, fizzy, endlessly refreshing, and built directly in the glass with no shaker required if you do not want one. For a hot summer 2026 evening, it might be the most quenching thing you can pour.
This guide covers how to make a proper one, the handful of ways to get it wrong, and the eight gins — from a $28 workhorse to a citrus-forward Italian standout — that each push the drink in a slightly different direction.
The 8 gins in this guide
What a Tom Collins actually is
The Tom Collins is the original gin highball: two ounces of gin, one ounce of fresh lemon juice, half an ounce of simple syrup, topped with three or four ounces of soda water, served tall over ice and garnished with a lemon wheel and a cherry. The name traces to an 1800s hoax and later to Old Tom gin, the slightly sweetened style that was standard at the time. Today it is almost always made with London dry, and the sweetness comes from the syrup instead of the spirit.
It is a first cousin to two drinks you may already make. It is essentially a gin and tonic with lemon and soda in place of tonic water — drier, more citrus-driven, and without tonic's quinine bitterness. And if you shake it and skip the soda, you are basically making a gin sour. Understanding those cousins tells you exactly what the Collins is for: the tallest, most refreshing, least sweet of the family.
How to make a perfect one
Build it right in a tall Collins or highball glass. Add the gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup, fill the glass with ice, then top with cold soda water and give it one gentle stir — you want to lift the syrup off the bottom without knocking the bubbles out. Garnish with a lemon wheel and a brandied cherry. That is it.
Three things separate a great Collins from a forgettable one. Fresh lemon, always — bottled juice tastes flat and slightly cooked, and in a drink this simple there is nowhere to hide. Cold soda, gently handled — warm soda over ice goes flat in seconds, so keep the bottle in the fridge and stir once, not ten times. And adjust the syrup to your gin: a bold, junipery gin wants the full half-ounce, while a softer, more floral gin is often better with a little less. Taste and tune.
The 8 gins, and what each one does to the drink
The value workhorses. You do not need an expensive gin for a Collins, and arguably you should not use one — the lemon and soda do a lot of the talking. Tanqueray Gin London Dry 750Ml ($27.99) is the classic call: crisp, juniper-forward, and it cuts cleanly through the lemon so the drink tastes sharp and traditional. Fords Gin ($27.99) is the bartender's budget favorite, built specifically to shine in cocktails rather than solo — balanced, citrus-friendly, and it never fights the other ingredients. Bombay Sapphire Gin ($28.09) sits right in the middle: bright, lightly peppery, and reliably good, which is why it is on nearly every back bar in the country.
The premium picks. Spend up and the botanicals get more interesting. Tanqueray Gin No. 10 750Ml ($42.99) is made with fresh whole citrus in the still, so it practically leans into a lemon drink — the most seamless upgrade on this list for a Collins specifically. Hendrick's Gin ($45.99) brings cucumber and rose, turning the drink softer and more perfumed; garnish with a cucumber ribbon instead of lemon and you have something genuinely different. The Botanist Gin ($42.99) is loaded with 22 foraged botanicals, giving a complex, herbal Collins for people who find plain gin boring.
The citrus specialists. Here is the fun part. Malfy Gin Con Limone ($37.99) is an Italian gin made with Amalfi and Sicilian lemon peel — it is basically built to be a Tom Collins. Use it and you can dial back the lemon juice, because the gin brings its own. It is the single most on-theme bottle in this guide. Its sibling Malfy Gin Con Original ($37.09) is the juniper-forward, Italian-coastal base of the range — cleaner and drier, a lovely everyday Collins gin that lets the lemon and soda stay in front. Both live alongside the rest of our lineup in the Gin collection.
Three variations worth knowing
Once you have the base down, the Collins is a template. Swap the spirit and you get a whole family: bourbon makes a John Collins, aged rum a rum Collins, and a splash of an aperitivo liqueur turns it faintly bitter and rosy. Swap the sweetener — honey syrup, or a spoon of good jam — and you can match it to the fruit of the moment. And for a crowd, it batches beautifully: mix the gin, lemon, and syrup ahead in a pitcher, then add ice and soda per glass so nothing goes flat.
Build your bar
Everything here is in the Gin collection, and if you want to see which bottles are actually flying off the shelf this summer, the Best Sellers collection is the honest scoreboard. Already comfortable with the Collins and looking for the next gin cocktail? Our Negroni guide takes you to the bittersweet end of the spectrum, and the Martini is back for when you want something colder and more serious.
But for a hot evening this summer, start here. Fresh lemon, cold soda, a good gin, tall glass, big ice. The Tom Collins has been refreshing people for a century and a half for a reason. Shop the full gin collection →
