Pimm’s is a dark reddish-brown liqueur, gin-based, flavoured with herbs, spices and quinine, and drunk almost exclusively between May and September. If there is a British drink that signals summer, this is it.
How to serve it
The standard is one part Pimm’s to three parts lemonade — British lemonade, which is clear and fizzy, closer to Sprite than to American cloudy lemonade.
Then, in a tall jug over plenty of ice:
- Strawberries, sliced
- Orange, in half-moons
- Cucumber, in ribbons or batons
- Mint, a generous handful, bruised
- Apple, and sometimes borage flowers if anyone is being serious about it
The cucumber is not an affectation and not optional. It is part of the original serve, and a Pimm’s without it tastes noticeably flat.
James Pimm
Pimm was the owner of an oyster bar in the City of London in the 1840s. He served a house tonic — gin with a secret mixture of herbs and quinine — in a small tankard called a No. 1 Cup, sold as an aid to digestion, which is where the name on the bottle comes from.
It sold well enough that he began bottling it commercially in 1851, and the recipe is still held closely — reportedly known to only a handful of people.
The other cups
Pimm’s produced a numbered range based on different spirits: No. 2 on Scotch, No. 3 on brandy, No. 4 on rum, No. 5 on rye, No. 6 on vodka. Most were discontinued. No. 3 survives as the brandy-based Winter Pimm’s, served hot with apple juice and spices, and No. 6 is still made in small quantities.
Where it is drunk
Pimm’s is inseparable from a specific set of British summer occasions, nearly all of them outdoors and most of them on grass:
- Wimbledon, where enormous quantities are sold alongside the strawberries.
- Royal Ascot and the racing season.
- Henley Regatta, cricket, and school sports days.
- Punting, where it is drunk by the passengers while somebody else does the work.
- Garden parties, barbecues, and the first genuinely warm weekend of the year.
The class of it
Pimm’s carries an unmistakable social signal — it reads as garden party, boater hat and lawn — and the British are entirely aware of this and enjoy it either sincerely or ironically depending on the company. A jug of Pimm’s in a park in June is one of the more agreeable ways the country deals with having sunshine, and nobody is under any illusion about what it is for.