You know you’re onto a good thing when two countries argue vociferously over who gets the credit for a culinary creation. Take, for instance, the humble Tom Collins; a classic cocktail in the truest sense, comprising only gin, lemon and sugar.

The UK and the US have been snarking each other silly for decades, each party stating with absolute certainty that their countrymen are responsible for its genius. We Brits (including famed cocktail historian David Wondrich) like to think the brew was named after one John Collins, a waiter at Limmer’s Old House on London’s Hanover Square. Indeed, a recipe for the drink appears in the Steward and Barkeeper’s Manual of 1869, and Jerry Thomas’ 1877 Bon Vivant’s Companion.

Our cousins across the pond, however, prefer to link its origins to the Tom Collins hoax of 1874, where people (before the days of internet trolling and cat memes, you understand) would walk into a bar, ask a bystander if they’d “seen Tom Collins?”, and proceed to inform the stranger that TC was talking smack about them and was hiding out in a nearby bar. The idea being, that said stranger would storm off to a local bar, and ask “has anyone seen Tom Collins?” and on and on it goes.

Kudos to the Americans for their sense of humour, but we value written proof and the stamp of approval from booze historians. So we’ll say that the Tom Collins is a British invention.

But what’s all the fuss about? Why are the UK and the US fighting over this simple little drink? How good can gin, lemon and sugar taste?

Very. So good, in fact, that Drambuie Brand Ambassador Freddy May has whipped up his own version of the vintage drink, in homage to its simplicity: a honey-sweetened, aromatic blend of herbs and spirit, all candy-coated summer bubbles on a sweltering summer day.

“A Tom Collins is classic, but it can still give you a lemon pucker face after a couple,” he says, “so I created a pimped-up version, where the honey in the Drambuie adds sweetness.”