The Versatile Gin and Tonic

Because of my unusual interest in the food and beverage world, I get a lot of junk email from websites that I unwittingly subscribed to while browsing their content. They normally go straight into the trash, unless something in the title grabs me. Your favorite taco and its wine pair, for example, seduced me, even though I no longer live in Texas. Classic Easter candy and wine pairings also spoke to me, as did the adult guide to Halloween candy and wine pairings. They were just too much fun to read! Peeps and prosecco! Reese’s peanut butter cup and just about anything! Ten recipes for wine popsicles arrived on a particularly hot and cranky day. It made me wish that I had more room in my freezer! And of course, thanks to those random emails, I now have a wish list of odd cocktails to try: beer based ones, wine based ones, and bubbly ones too!

One such email spam article has haunted me since last summer: five easy upgrades to your gin and tonic. I love gin and tonic. I’ve been known to drink it with well gin, but I usually ask for Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire. Nothing too exotic. While I can tell a well gin from a good gin, I can’t really tell the differences between the varieties of good gin. So my fabulous liquor cabinet usually only contains one bottle of gin at a time.

When I stumbled upon a Spanish sidra at the local cider works, I instantly recalled that this article had a recipe for a gin and tonic that required a Spanish sidra. So I bought a growler (it’s so cute and small!), had it filled with the Spanish sidra, and hurried on home to look up the article - again.

Gin and Juice

The hardest part about the recipe for the Gin and Juice was finding all the ingredients for it. Granted, I always have gin in the fabulous liquor cabinet. However, I’ve never seen Spanish sidra outside the local cider works, and I’m not shy about looking for or asking for strange stuff. When I was first obsessed with this article, I asked my small local liquor store to special order a bottle of tonic syrup. They were unable to acquire it for me, so I was delighted to find it several months later in the cocktail section of a local Sur la Table. I still have no idea what else I’m going to use it for, but at least I have it in my refrigerator.

Once the three ingredients have been lined up, the Gin and Juice starts with a rocks glass fairly well filled with the sidra. Add to that a measure of tonic syrup and half a measure of gin and you’re done! Obviously, it tastes a lot like sidra, but the tonic syrup and the gin seem to tame its funkiness. It’s a very drinkable cocktail. In fact, I had finished it before I even motivated to start scrubbing the paella pan for the tagliatelle with champignon sauce that I had planned to make for dinner that night. The simplicity of the drink does make me wonder how it would compare to a regular glass of sidra, but I’m not so curious that I’ll actually do the comparison.

The Insanely Good Gin and Tonic

Yet again, finding the ingredients for the second drink on the list - the Insanely Good Gin and Tonic - was a bit of a challenge. The drink was basically gin, Suze, lime cordial, tonic water and Angostura bitters; however, the lime cordial recipe required the peels from sixteen limes, lime juice, sugar, and unaged Peruvian Pisco. Naturally, rather than peel all those limes and hunt down a specific bottle of Pisco, I planned to go with the suggested substitution of lime juice for the lime cordial. So the bottle of Suze was only the quest item. After checking a few of the larger liquor stores, I put in a special order at my small local liquor store. Of course, it only took them a few days to deliver the goods.

The Insanely Good Gin and Tonic was very different than the Gin and Juice; however, it was very similar to a traditional gin and tonic. I might have overdone it on the Angostura bitters because I didn’t feel like digging out my 1/8 teaspoon measure. But, as far as I could tell, that only impacted the color of the drink, making it almost indistinguishable from the Gin and Juice. In general, the drink tasted like a really good gin and tonic. I couldn’t really pick out the different flavors of the gin, Suze, lime juice, and tonic water because they blended so nicely. It almost tasted like I had used a tonic water that was heavy on the quinine, but I had just used ordinary Schweppes. I just happened to like the taste of quinine, so I would definitely make this cocktail again.

The Soft Shock

The ingredients for the third drink on the list - the Soft Shock - weren’t a challenge at all. I easily found mint in the herb section of my grocery store, and I had the other five ingredients readily on hand. There has been a bottle of homemade smile syrup in my refrigerator for as long as I can remember; whenever it gets low, I make more so that it never runs out. Lime juice is another staple in the refrigerator. Gin and tonic water are staples in my liquor cabinet (even though my tonic water was Schweppes and not Fever Tree). Finding the sherry in the cabinet was a bit of a search. At first, I grabbed the marsala wine and thought I’d have to make do, but then I looked at the front row again, and there was a bottle of golden sherry staring me right in the face. I figured that was closer to fino sherry than marsala wine, so I went with it.

Once I had all the ingredients ready, the drink came together very quickly. All there really was to do was to muddle the mint leaves with the simple syrup, stir in the remaining ingredients, and top off with tonic water. Slightly more complex than the basic gin and tonic, but not so complicated as to be forbidding.

The Soft Shock was very good, like a sweet and minty gin and tonic. Despite the fact that the measure of sherry was twice the measure of gin, I could barely distinguish the taste of the sherry amid the stronger tastes of mint and quinine. I’m not one hundred percent convinced that I would make this drink again, when I could possibly achieve the same effect by just muddling mint into a plain gin and tonic.

Gin and Tonic’d Elderflower

When I first read through the recipe for the Gin and Tonic’d Elderflower, I knew I would have to make some modifications. The recipe as written requires chilling the cocktail and then carbonating it through a soda siphon. I don’t have a soda siphon, and I don’t drink enough carbonated beverages to need a soda siphon. So I would have to either adapt or forgo the recipe. Adaptation seemed like an easy route to take, as I would just have to substitute club soda for the plain water.

Then again, this was a large batch recipe that yielded approximately 20 ounces. If I didn’t like it, I’d be committing the cardinal sin of wasting liquor. And the chances were high that I wouldn’t like it: it contained Campari, which is one of my least favorite liquors. In fact, the recipe read more like an Americano (sans the sweet vermouth) than a gin and tonic. The titular elderflower was only 2/3 ounce, and would be overwhelmed by the substantially greater volumes of gin and Campari.

In the end, I decided to save my Campari for friends who would be visiting at the end of the month. The Gin and Tonic’d Elderflower was just too unappetizing for me to attempt.

G&T&C&R

I also didn’t try the G&T&C&R - or at least not as written. Not because I was afraid that I wouldn’t like it; rather because it seemed like a lot of work to juice cucumbers to make the requisite cucumber ice cubes for the drink. And I wasn’t sure that I even had room in my freezer to make a tray of ice cubes! Besides, I still had a bottle of Wild Moon Cucumber liqueur, as well as some of the Rose, Cucumber, Gin and Tonic liquor base left over from my Summer Solstice party earlier in the summer.

However, I was intrigued by the use of rhubarb bitters in a classic gin and tonic. So, I mixed a gin and tonic using the proportions indicated in the recipe, and measured in two dashes (1/4 teaspoon) of rhubarb bitters. Unfortunately, the difference that the addition of bitters to the drink was not readily apparent. But that aside, the proportions made an excellent gin and tonic - even if I was using my house brands rather than the recommended brands.

The Verdict

In the end, I had so much fun trying the different riffs on a classic gin and tonic that I am kind of looking forward to doing it again with another classic cocktail. Perhaps the Aperol Spritz?