The Quest for the Perfect Cocktail: Examining the Gin & Tonic

The Quest for the Perfect Cocktail: Examining the Gin & Tonic Source: http://www.slashfood.com/2007/04/29/the-quest-for-the-perfect-cocktail-examining-the-gin-and-tonic/ As you may know I am a spirits fanatic, especially gin, and a big fan of fine cocktails. I have been doing intense research in the areas of spirits and cocktails for quite awhile and examining the details of what takes a cocktail and elevates it to the realm of sublime. Many cocktails have a plethora of ingredients, sadly they are dismal creations better suited to cleaning drains than sipping for enjoyment. For a good cocktail, usually less is more. Classically in a cocktail you have the main spirit or two, spirit or alcohol based modifiers to add their character, possibly a fruit component, a small but very important addition of something like bitters for complexity, and another modifier that brings down the strength of the drink. Usually this is melting ice/water, but in the case of highballs it is also soda, tonic, etc., and in some great cocktails it's topping off the drink with champagne. Now that Spring has sprung and summer is just around the corner my thoughts go to the Gin and Tonic. I happen to really like G&T's. Since I was in my late teens and able to drink legally, this was the drink that I had more often by far than any other. (Actually it was my drink of choice from a much younger age, but times were different back then, and the legal drinking age of 18 was treated more like a suggestion, than a law.) The more I came to love my G&T, the more exacting I became about the ingredients and proportions in the drink. I came to think of it as a science and have made off the cuff speeches many a time while ordering my drink. I ask what types of gin they have available and what brand tonic water. Usually the choices are poor but lately that has been changing. I was interviewed just a few days ago by the New York Post for a Sidebar on their Good Libations summer drinks feature on the state of gins and tonic waters available today. One thing I came back to again and again is that the brand and types of gin and tonic make a big difference in the final drink. All G&T's are not the same. In fact they can vary so greatly that at times one wonders if they are the same drink. Recently one of the other Slashfood bloggers wrote a short Happy Hour post about a recipe by David Rosengarten posted on the Food Network site called The Perfect Gin and Tonic. He then proceeded to question the specification of both the gin and the tonic water called for in the recipe. He wrote, "The funniest part of this is where they "recommend" that you use Schweppes Tonic Water and Plymouth Gin. Really? Using those brands will make a difference, eh? Ha." When I read that I slapped myself across the forehead and said "Make a difference? Ha?" ... " Whooa!" For me this is something I always consider and I had to disagree with the statement. Make a difference? Of course it does. I took a hard look at Rosengarten's recipe for a Gin & Tonic. I studied it and thought about it, and finally I felt that the recipe mentioned would make a great drink. Maybe not "perfect" but pretty damn good. One much better than a drink that is made using bargain brand tonic water and a low or mid-level gin. The recipe wasn't copied out in full in the post and a key part was left out, the amount of tonic water. In this case the proportions are very important and play a key role. So let's take a look at the drink of Gin & Tonic carefully. It's a deceptively simple drink. Basically just gin and tonic water right? Well yes... and no. Most G&T recipes call for 2 oz. of gin, plus tonic water and ice, but aren't very specific. Usually a G&T is made in a highball glass, and so this would mean apx. 4-8 oz of tonic water depending upon the glass size, with five ounces being assumed the normal/classic amount. This means that most G&T's have ratios of 1:2, (1:2.5 for the classic 2 oz. gin to 5 oz. tonic), 1:3, or even 1:4 of gin to tonic. Rosengarten's recipe (I'll post it in full at the end) calls for a much different ratio, that of 3:4 gin to tonic, almost half and half. (Personally I go past that into an even higher ratio with 2:1 gin to tonic so that the attributes of the botanicals in the gin are the main focus, with the tonic helping to round it out and bring it together.) Then there is the other ingredient in this recipe, one that isn't usually focused on but very important, the fresh lime juice. Most G&T recipes call for a squeeze of lime, usually from a 1/8 or 1/16 section of a lime. A whole lime has around two ounces of juice, so the most lime juice in traditional recipes runs to about 1/8 to ¼ ounce if the piece of lime is fully and completely squeezed dry, which is usually not the case. This recipe calls for one tablespoon of juice which is ½ ounce, much more than normally used. As for the gin, the quality of gin used is as important as the tonic. Plymouth is an excellent gin. It is light, smooth, subtle and very tasty, with a great juniper presence. It is a premium gin in all regards, and one with a long history as such. It is the only gin allowed to be called a Plymouth style gin, besides having Plymouth as its brand name, and it was the only gin of its type for many, many years. Normally I might say that Plymouth might be overwhelmed in a Gin & Tonic, but Rosengarten's recipe asks for 3 oz. of Plymouth gin to 4 oz. of Schweppes tonic water. The recipes ratio is such that the tonic water and a full half ounce of fresh lime juice will showcase the best attributes of such an excellent gin. The additional use of tonic water ice cubes also ensures that the ice doesn't water down the drink, they just tonic it down. I really like Plymouth Gin, but there are many other premium and super premium gins on the market. Each with its own unique flavor profile. Each one makes a different tasting G&T. Bluecoat American Gin has a fantastic musky orange flavor that brings a new character to the drink, as does the extremely floral G'Vine Gin. Beefeater's classic London Dry style with its flinty character goes in one direction while Aviation Gin with a big, bold, slightly sweet, almost genever like flavor goes to the other extreme. And then you have the super light gins like Bulldog and Bafferts which can be completely overwhelmed by the tonic. Tasting G&T's made in the same ratios, but with these radically different gins, will point out how important the character of the gin is to the drink. So now we look at the tonic water. There are bargain tonics and major brands, some of which taste pretty good and others which do not. The major thing is that until recently there have been no premium or super premium brands. Schweppes has consistently been the 'go to' tonic water out of all the mainstream tonics. It is definitely one of the best tasting available, and many people who care about G&T agree with this, including the "King of Cocktails" Dale DeGroff and other experts in this area. Just like the gin, a good tonic water can make or break the drink. It needs a good level of bitter, astringent quinine which is then mellowed out with a sweetener, and has a bit of citrus juice or citric acid; both as a stabilizer, and for that hint of acidity to blend the bitter and sweet together harmoniously. Now Schweppes is pretty good tasting, and until around a year or so ago it was the best available. But it is no Fever-Tree tonic water, Q Tonic water, or on a slightly lesser level Stirrings, all super premium or premium brands. Schweppes is worlds in quality above most of the other brands and readily available. Readily available being the key words. The super premium Fever-Tree from the UK is only just becoming available on the West Coast as I write. Stirrings,a premium tonic is available in limited areas of the East Coast with a smaller representation in other areas. Jordan Silbert's super premium Q Tonic water isn't even out on the market and available to the general public yet, and won't be until near Memorial Day 2007. Canada Dry tonic water is close to Schweppes, as is Polar tonic water as of my last tasting of it many years ago, but I think that was before they switched to using High Fructose Corn Syrup, (HFCS). Whole Foods 365 tonic water is also pretty good, but not exceptional. Personally I prefer tonic water made with pure cane sugar instead of HFCS, but they are hard to find. In the mid to late 1970's many soft drink manufacturers started to switch over to HFCS, with most switching over by the mid 1980's, a sad state of affairs. At least this is slowly changing as consumers hear about the possibly negative health aspects of HFCS, (anything from obesity to liver damage) and ask for cane sugar as a sweetener instead. Examples of tonic water without HFCS that use cane sugar are Fever-Tree and 365, and then there is the new Q Tonic I mentioned earlier which uses agave syrup as the sweetener, making for a more complex taste. I have pre-production samples of Q Tonic here that I have enjoyed, but am waiting patiently for the final production batch to get delivered for review. There are other premium and super premium tonic waters in the pipeline, but are months or years away. Some bars make their own house tonic water. Just yesterday I was at Bemelmens Bar in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, one of the best cocktail bars in NYC, and saw on their drink menu that their G&T uses house made tonic water or syrup. (I can't remember which.) In NYC the Tasting Room uses their own tonic syrup as do other places like Grammercy Park and quite a few more. Also around the country there are many other bars and restaurants following the trend, as the New Golden Age of Cocktails grows and develops. Just as an aside I say New, because the original Golden Age of Cocktails (the cocktail being an American invention), ran from around 1800 to 1920. It actually started to slow down during the pre-WWI years of 1911-1914 and during the war years of 1914 -1918, then came to a crashing halt with the enforcement of Prohibition in the US in 1920. But I have to add that there are the other components to the drink to consider, like the ice. Making ice with good water or tonic water is important, as is the size of the cube. I like larger cubes that melt slowly, so that while the drink stays chilled, the ratios of the ingredients stay near what is intended. Then there is the lime, how much juice to add is important, but there are other things to consider. When squeezing the garnish, if you give it a hard twist over the drink you also add a spray of the citrus oil from the peel. This gives you a different flavor from the juice, one much more complex and tantalizing. Then there's the last question of should you even use lime? Lemon works well, some folks like it even better than lime. Add on to the list any other citrus like blood orange, mandarins, tangerine, grapefruit, etc. You can even use vegetables like a tiny splash of cucumber juice or tomato water. Each of these ingredients and garnishes brings its own unique flavors to the final concoction as long as they are used in moderation and match well with the botanicals and character of the gin. All in all, I really have to stress that for a great Gin & Tonic, it is the quality of all the ingredients that is key. The other piece of the puzzle is the ratios of ingredients. The ingredients may be the same in two different drinks, but if you change the ratios, you change the drink. Whether for better or worse is up to each individual, since we all have different tastes. So taking the drink from the hum drum level up to the sublime, is a combination of science and art. Science with examining the ratios of ingredients, art for choosing which ingredients match each other, or work off each other synergistically, to create the perfect cocktail. In this case the Gin & Tonic. Here's a link to a little article from The Perfect..., (a food and drink series at MSNBC) "where food and drink experts share their secrets" that agrees with my sentiments. Just for the fun of it this page illustrates how crystallites of a gin and tonic cocktail appear under a polarized light microscope. The full recipe for David Rosengarten's "The Perfect Gin and Tonic" as seen on the Food Network site is: 4 to 5 tonic water Ice Cubes (recommended: Schweppes) (see Note) 3 ounces gin (recommended: Plymouth Gin) 4 ounces tonic water (recommended: Schweppes) 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice Lime wedge for garnish "Place the ice cubes in a tall, narrow, chilled glass (the cubes should come near the top.) Add the gin, then the tonic water, then the lime juice, stirring well. Garnish with lime wedge, and serve immediately." "Note: To make the ice cubes, simply fill an empty ice cube tray with tonic water, and let the cubes freeze. It takes just a few hours. Covered well, the cubes will remain fresh-tasting in the freezer for at least a few weeks."