The Tom Collins is one of the foundational long drinks in the cocktail world — gin, lemon, sugar, soda water, served tall and cold. At some point somebody tried it with bourbon instead of gin, realized it worked beautifully, and the Whiskey Collins was born. Which it was, probably sometime in the mid-19th century when American bartenders were still figuring out all the interesting things you could do with bourbon.
The Whiskey Collins is the Tom Collins’s quieter cousin who grew up in Kentucky. It has the same refreshing structure — bright, lightly sweetened, sparkling — but with bourbon’s vanilla and caramel in place of gin’s botanical character. It’s less herbal, more approachable, and it makes an excellent early summer drink for anyone who finds a straight whiskey sour a little too concentrated on a warm afternoon.
Evan Williams Single Barrel — A Worthy Choice
Evan Williams Single Barrel is an annual release from Heaven Hill that punches well above its price point — usually around $30 depending on where you find it, which for a single barrel bourbon is practically a gift. Each bottle is from a single barrel, dated with the distillation and bottling year, and the character varies slightly from release to release. What’s consistent is that it’s a genuinely complex bourbon with good depth — caramel, dried fruit, toasted oak — that brings more interest to a Collins than a standard mixing bourbon would.
You don’t need to use a single barrel in a Collins. Evan Williams Black Label makes a perfectly fine version at half the price. But if you want to make a Collins that makes someone ask what bourbon you used, the Single Barrel is the answer.
Four Roses Single Barrel is the premium step-up — floral, complex, and lovely in a long drink. Buffalo Trace is the reliable budget alternative.
The Collins Formula
The structure of a Collins is simple: spirit, citrus, sweetener, soda. The key is the soda — you want a plain club soda or sparkling water with no added flavors, and you want it cold and freshly opened. Flat soda makes a flat Collins.
The lemon and simple syrup get shaken with the bourbon first, then strained into the glass over ice, then topped with the soda. That order matters — shaking the whole thing including the soda would knock the carbonation out before it got to the glass.
A Collins glass — tall, narrow — is the traditional vessel and it keeps the soda from going flat as fast as a wider glass would. A highball works fine if that’s what you have.
