Bubbles are important. They carry aroma and hence flavour. And the colder and bigger and more long-lasting they are, the more aroma and the more flavour. Mixers tend to be fizzy for that reason. That is why a simple G&T with its cold crisp fizziness is one of the most refreshing and tasty drinks around.
There are almost as many mixers on the market these days as gins, which can make it all rather confusing. If it wasn’t difficult enough choosing a gin, you now have to decide how to pair it. This chapter will help you decide for yourself the best mixer to choose for your gin. At the end, there will also be a few easy-to-make cocktail syrup recipes. And, like choosing a gin, there is no right or wrong mixer to go with your gin; it’s down to taste preference.
Gin and tonic go together like fish and chips. It feels like they have been around forever. Yet gin mixed with tonic water is a nineteenth-century invention, originating in India, among the British army. The original tonic was created out of medicinal expediency. Quinine, made from cinchona bark, was administered to ward off malaria. But taken in liquid form it tasted bitter and unpalatable. Adding it to soda water, sugar and gin, thought to aid digestion, disguised its bitterness and created the forerunner of the G&T we know today. So originally a G&T was drunk for its perceived health benefits.
In 1858, Erasmus Bond, a Victorian mineral water manufacturer created his ‘improved aerated tonic liquid’. In 1870, the Swiss brand Schweppes, already successfully producing soda water since 1783, followed suit, producing their first Indian Tonic Water. And you could say the rest is history. But not quite…
In 2005 a new company called Fever-Tree released a Premium Indian Tonic Water on to the mixer market, spearheading an advance of premium mixer manufacturers using natural ingredients to match the increasing diversity of craft gins. The boom in gin has in part been fuelled by these innovative mixer manufacturers. You can now pair your gin with flavours as diverse as tart Sicilian lemon to floral hibiscus. There is almost certainly a mixer out there to match your gin and your taste preference.
But don’t forget the humble plain or Indian tonic. For years it has partnered gin with perfect simplicity, letting the gin shine through. And long may it continue to do so.
NAMES TO LOOK OUT FOR
This list is not exhaustive by any means but hopefully may point you in the right direction.
Fever-Tree
After the launch of their Premium Indian Tonic Water, the company went on to launch more flavours including, Mediterranean – good with savoury gins, Elderflower – goes well with floral gins – and finally Aromatic – which pairs nicely with juniper-forward gins. I say finally but the FT drinks menu is more extensive than this and includes a range of Refreshingly Light tonics with a lower calorie count.
Fentimans
Unlike Fever-Tree this company has been around for just over 100 years, but they are not a drinks dinosaur and easily rival Fever-Tree in their diversity. One tonic to mention is their Connoisseur Tonic which pairs delightfully with any gin. They also do a rather nice Pink Grapefruit flavour for citrus lovers.
Schweppes
Those who thought that the behemoth Schweppes was dead are wrong. It is still a world-class tonic water. In 2017 they launched their premium 1783 range to compete with the new mixers. The skittle or egg-shaped bottle is a nod to their past, while the new flavours such as Crisp Cucumber embrace the current trend in flavoursome tonics. Their attention to carbonation is still the same and is at the heart of their brand ethos.
Merchant’s Heart
Set up in 2015, Merchant’s Heart are a small premium manufacturer who make ‘spirit enhancers’. Their Hibiscus flavour naturally pairs well with floral gins.
Double Dutch
A flavoursome range of mixers that can be enjoyed on their own or in cocktails.
The London Essence Company
A small range of tonics. Their Grapefruit & Rosemary pairs well with savoury gins.
Soda water is fizz at its simplest: carbonated water with a small amount of sodium bicarbonate added. It’s the fizz in a Tom Collins (see page 58) and often in a Gin Fizz (see page 135).
If you are not fond of its slightly salty taste you can always use sparkling mineral water instead.
Ginger ale pairs perfectly with some of the rhubarb gins. Think cooking. What flavours would ginger go with? It is also the fizz in the Floradora cocktail (see page 156).
Rose lemonade is very popular and rightly so. Its Turkish Delight rose flavour lifts many a gin in a summery concoction and it can be substituted for Prosecco in a Gin Fizz (see page 135).
Silician lemonade is another mixer that pairs well with gin. Good-quality Sicilian lemonade is tart without being acidic.
Plain lemonade without any bells and whistles adds a touch of sweetness to a gin for those of you who are not fond of tonic water’s slight bitterness.
Cola is a surprising mixer for gin. You would normally think rum and coke or vodka and coke. But cola is sometimes paired with a robust gin and is not too bad at all.
SIMPLE SYRUP
Simple syrup is just sugar pre-dissolved in water, in the ratio of 2:1, or 1:1 if a lighter syrup is preferred, to make it easy when you want to add a touch of sweetness to your cocktail recipes to balance the sour of lemon or lime.
It’s as easy to make as it sounds. Simply add 2 cups of sugar to every 1 cup of water in a pan.
Heat gently to dissolve the sugar; do not boil. Cool slightly, then pour into a sterilised bottle. It will keep in the fridge once cool for a few months.
For the following recipes don’t be tempted to let the sugar mixture come to the boil. Not only will this spoil the flavour but it will alter the viscosity of the liquid.
Tip: It doesn’t really matter which measurement you use to make cocktail syrups, as long as you measure by volume rather than weight and use the ratio of 2 sugar to 1 liquid. I use American cups because I find that an easy way to measure ingredients. 1 cup = 250ml volume.
BLACKBERRY SYRUP
A deep jewel purple of a syrup, a drop of which will transform your G&T into something quite special. The aroma as it cooks will fill your kitchen with the smell of ripe-berried autumn. It also makes a non-alcoholic alternative to crème de mûre in the Bramble cocktail (see page 162).
Ingredients:
250g blackberries (frozen are fine for this recipe)
1 cup (250ml) water
2 cups (500ml by volume) sugar
Method:
Simmer the blackberries and water in a pan with the lid on gently for 20 minutes.
Leave to cool in the pan and to further infuse the blackberries.
Strain the liquid through a fine-mesh sieve into a measuring jug. You should have more than 1 cup of liquid as the blackberries will have released a lot of juice. Don’t waste the blackberries (delicious with cream!).
Measure the liquid and pour into a clean pan. Add double the volume of sugar to liquid as if you were making a simple syrup, i.e. 2 cups of sugar for every 1 cup of liquid.
Heat gently for 5 minutes, until the sugar crystals dissolve, taking care not to let the syrup catch on the bottom of the pan.
Bottle in a sterilised container, let cool and, then store in the fridge. It will last a few weeks.
RHUBARB SYRUP
This syrup has a delicate rhubarb flavour that infuses your gin with the essence of spring.
For this recipe, you must use forced rhubarb. Old green stems will not produce the pretty pink colour you need for the syrup and you will need considerably more sugar to sweeten them. Buy them fresh in spring when they are in season. And pick stems that are bright pink and unblemished.
Ingredients:
4 sticks rhubarb chopped (about 400g)
1 cup water
2 cups sugar
Method:
Place the chopped rhubarb and water in a heavy bottomed pan, preferably non-stick. Place over a medium heat and slowly bring to simmer.
Gently simmer for about 20 minutes until the rhubarb is very soft, taking care not to boil. Your kitchen will smell heavenly.
Skim off any foam that appears. This won’t spoil the flavour of your syrup, but it will spoil the look of it.
Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool.
Strain through a fine-mesh sieve by gently pressing with the back of a spoon until you have squeezed out most of the liquid. Keep the pulp – it will be delicious in a crumble or cake.
Measure the liquid. You will need 1 cup of rhubarb liquid. Return to the clean pan and add the sugar and heat slowly to dissolve. There is no need to boil.
Once the sugar has dissolved the liquid should be a lovely glossy pink. Pour through a funnel into a sterilised jar or bottle. It will keep for a few weeks in the fridge.
CUCUMBER SYRUP
Cucumber syrup makes a nice addition to a number of gins, whether fruity, herby or juniper-forward. And like the others, it is easy to make.
Ingredients:
1 cucumber, peeled
2 cups sugar
Method:
Once the cucumber is peeled, blitz it in a blender until you have cucumber mush.
Sieve the mush into a jug or bowl. Press with the back of a spoon to squeeze out as much of the juice as you can.
Sieve the liquid again but this time through a muslin cloth.
Measure the liquid which should be a pale clear green. For every cup of liquid add 2 cups sugar to a clean pan.
Heat gently for 5 minutes, taking care not to boil the liquid.
Cool slightly and pour into a sterilised bottle. It will last for a few weeks in the fridge.
A style of gin, sweeter than London Dry but drier than Dutch genever, forming a historic bridge between the two, Old Tom is currently seeing a resurgence in popularity.
18th to 19thC ~ The origin of Old Tom as a style of gin is elusive. It emerged at the time of the Gin Craze when gin distilling was primitive, crude and sometimes downright poisonous. One train of thought is that sugar or liquorice was added to these coarse gins to make them more palatable.
But where the name Old Tom comes from is just as elusive. One version is that following the Gin Act of 1736 a one Captain Dudley Bradstreet set up a gin-shop called the Puss & Mew. In the window of his shop, he hung the sign of a cat. There was a slot under the cat’s paw where money could be fed. The gin would then be poured through a pipe by Bradstreet straight into the waiting client’s mouth.
Though the existence of Bradstreet’s gin-shop is undisputed, this doesn’t explain why a style of gin should be named after a particular gin shop. After all, there were approximately 7000 gin shops in London at the time.
Another version of the origin of the name is that an old tomcat fell into a vat of gin. This is not particularly believable, as the gin afterwards would have been undrinkable.
The final version of the name’s origin and the most credible comes from a distillery. Hodge’s Distillery had a young apprentice named Tom Norris. The Master Distiller was also called Thomas. Young Tom, after finishing his apprenticeship, opened a gin shop in Covent Garden selling a gin called, you guessed it – Old Tom.
Wherever the name came from it stuck to the style of gin like sugar syrup. Wooden plaques shaped like black cats were hung outside gin shops and public houses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to advertise that they were selling Old Tom.
20th to 21stC ~ The twentieth century saw a demise in the popularity of Old Tom gin until 2007, when Hayman’s released their gin using an old family recipe. This sparked a revival in Old Tom among craft distillers which happily continues today. Now if you want to sample Old Tom there is a whole gin cabinet to choose from.