Mister Cocktail

After a long weekend, this day feels like a Sunday to me, that’s why I probably  postponed the G&T Sunday posting to today. It’s been a great weekend and I celebrated being married to the Mrs for 1 year exactly last Saturday and treated our guests to a nice amount of G&T’s, which were happily accepted. The next day we enjoyed a friends’ birthday in the park in Amsterdam where we also filled the booze table with 2 nice transparent blue bottles of gin accompanied with some quality tonic. Again, people were happy with this. The gin-craze is slowly starting in Holland, a good 250 years after it ended in the UK (which was 1757 in case you’d like to know).

For this G&T review I choose The Botanist, which had been looking at me for some time from the spirit cabinet. Of course this wasn’t the first time for me to mix it at all, but sitting down and really describing what happens in several mixes is a different ballgame from enjoying one in the sun while reading.

This gin is created by the Bruichladdich Distillery which is located on the Isle of Islay, in the North-West of Scotland. This area is famous for it’s peaty whiskies and this distillery has always been in the centre of innovation since it’s opening in 1881. The still which produces The Botanist is a Lomond Still, the very last of its kind and affectionately called Ugly Betty. This is a steam powered, low-pressure still which takes 17 hours to complete the distillation cycle. And this gin requires two of them: 1 for the ‘standard’ gin botanicals and 1 to infuse the 22 local botanicals in the gin.

The result in taste is a complex, yet strangely accessible gin. The nose contains a lot of sweetness and freshness from the flowers, fruit, herbs and spices: there’s chamomile and elderflower, orange and mint. The juniper in this gin is quite strong, but never overpowering.  In the mouth there’s all these herbs that work together and the huge range of wild flowers they are using work their magic here. Getting the right ingredients at exactly the right time is a proof of intimate knowledge of local vegetation by the distiller. The one that stays there in the aftertaste in the mint (peppermint and water mint leaves). My taste buds are not that refined, so naming all ingredients is too far fetched for me, but you can find the complete list of botanicals on this great gin-blog (but please keep reading mine as well).

Schweppes Tonic: The Botanist benefits quite well from the strong bitter and sweet notes in Schweppes although it struggles to keep itself upright next to this tonic at some moments. The floral notes still shine through and the complexity of the gin still shows.
7.5/10

Fever Tree: These 2 meet each other in a soft and sweet middle taste, which works towards a slightly bitter aftertaste with long floral notes and a lovely taste of mint. I used a slice of lemon to balance the drink more.
8.5/10

Fentiman’s: The Botanist is quite low in citrus taste and benefits really well from the stronger citric notes in Fentiman’s Tonic. This tonic water contains kaffir lime and lemon and balances this gin in a great way. The sweet and floral notes in the gin get all the room they need to come through and are nicely balanced by the quinine.
9.5/10

Conclusion: The tonic water that compliments The Botanist best is Fentiman’s Tonic: in gins with higher levels of citrus notes (could be from lemon, coriander, orange etc) this tonic water tends to overpower, but here they go together just fine!

How to: I mixed 50 mls of The Botanist Gin with 100 ml tonic water in a longdrink filled with icecubes. For garnishing I used a lemonwedge. I tried it with lime, but found this too strong for my taste. I also tried orange and orangepeel and these proved to be quite pleasant as well, taking the drink to a sweeter side. If you prefer an ever more herbal taste, I tried it with a sprig of thyme which worked very nice as well.

About 30 years before the launch of Bombay Sapphire, Alan Subin and Burton Brown, two old friends, decided to work on a gin together. They had these talks in the Gaslight Club in New York, which was co-owned by Brown. The Gaslight Club was a speakeasy, members-only concept that originated in Chicago, with Prohibition lifted not long before. The two gentlemen travelled to the United Kingdom and found a recipe that dated back to 1761 and contained 8 botanicals: Juniper, Lemon peel, Coriander seeds, Orris, Angelica, Almonds, Liquorice and Cassia Bark. The recipe called for a ‘vapour distillation’ which means that the botanicals are not boiled or steeped with the grain alcohol, but placed above it, so the fumes pick up the flavours.

Bombay Original has a lovely nose, with juniper, coriander and liquorice dominating. The taste is full-bodied with slightly bitter juniper and coriander with angelica at first and more sweet notes from cinnamon and liquorice coming through after that.

I seems a great gin for mixing with tonic water, accessible for everyone, even people who think not to like gin. How does this gin work with my 3 selected Tonic Waters?

Schweppes: This tonic water is high in carbonation and quite sweet, giving it a somewhat perfumed taste. It adds  a lot of sweetness to Bombay Original and really needs some lime to get back to that freshness. I have the feeling that the tonic is overpowering the gin a bit, although there’s still plenty of room for Bombay Original to shine.
7/10

Fever Tree: There is so much more space for Bombay Original in this mix. The lime really finishes the drink, although they taste already great together without a garnish. The carbonation in Fever Tree works great in both the glass and in your mouth and the relatively low levels of acidity in the tonic are compensated beautifully by Bombay Original.
9/10

Fentiman’s: This is the most eccentric tonic water of the bunch and already from the smell on you notice how different it is. It is strong in citric notes and bitterness from the quinine and are maybe a bit too strong for the Bombay Original, although all flavours taste very natural together.
8/10

Conclusion: With just the addition of a basic garnish like fresh lime it clear that the best Tonic Water with this Bombay Original Dry Gin is Fever Tree. It leaves room in exactly those places where the gin is strong and compensates the areas in which Bombay Original has less flavour. The complement each other in a beautiful way and although they are not the most adventurous combination, it is highly recommended.

Today was such a fine day that I treated myself not to 1, but 2 Gin & Tonics (I mean variations, not servings of course). The weather was just great and daylight saving kicked in, giving me an extra hour of enjoying a g&t in the sun. Since I already opened a bottle of Schweppes, to mix with Citadelle, I decided to go further with this one and mix it with another new addition to my collection: No. 3 Gin.

No. 3 Gin uses ‘only’ 6 botanicals, distilled with a high quality base-spirit. Although No. 3 Gin is a new product, it is created by the Berry Bros & Rudd, one of the oldest and highly regarded distillers in the U.K. that has been around since 1698. Each botanical can be identified quite easily, without being simple: this is still a wonderfully balanced gin. It is bottled at 46 % ABV / 92 proof so it needs to breathe just a little before you start nosing and tasting. Besides the juniper and lemon flavour (which comes historically almost invariably from coriander) you get the cardamom very strong. At the same time there are sweet fruity notes from orange and grapefruit which also deliver some sweetness.

Schweppes Tonic is one of the largest mainstream brands available in the world, but it all started in Geneva in 1783, where Johann Jacob Schweppe founded his company to produce carbonated softdrinks. This was invented a mere 13 years earlier by Joseph Priestly, who was an extremely clever guy back then, although he failed to commercialize his invention. Schweppes Tonic is high in carbonation and together with the kinine delivers quite a strong bitter taste. The high levels of sugar make it quite sweet, also because there are very little citrus-notes in Schweppes.

How do these 2 work together in the mix?
This is actually a very nice combination! The absence of citric-notes in Schweppes are a very good match with the No. 3 Gin. And because this gin does not have strong sweetener agents incorporated, it benefits from the strong sweetness in Schweppes. The addition of lime in the drink does not benefit the drink too well, I enjoyed it better without the lime, but I can imagine adding a slice of orange or grapefruit will lift this drink even further. The recommendation on their site is lemon which you can also try, as this has a less stronger sour taste than that of a lime. Please post any of your own findings in the comments below!

Rating: 9.0/10

Method: Pour 50 ml No. 3 Gin in a longdrink and fill with icecubes. Top with Schweppes Tonic and add your choice of garnish. Stir gently and serve.

My choice for today’s Gin & Tonic is 2 extremes: the exclusive, handcrafted Citadelle Gin, from the French region of Cognac, combined with Schweppes Tonic, one of the world largest brands for soft drinks. I was recently introduced to Citadelle, and I was very eager to try this one in my G&T reviews.

The story of Citadelle begins in the late 18th century, as 2 Frenchmen started producing Genièvre in Dunkirk with support of Louis XVI. The produced a small batch distillate which was primarily sold to the British, smuggled there as you will, because of the high excise on gin. The British had just barely survived the Gin-craze that lasted from 1720 to the early 1750s and had a heavy impact on the coutry’s social structure and public health. Asking a high tax for gin was one of the countermeasures. The French, who already didn’t like the British that much, would gladly help them to some inexpensive, yet qualitative gin.

Citadelle Gin is quite a full-bodied complex gin, containing no less than 19 botanicals. The taste is very fresh and balanced and it benefits from the 44 % ABV / 88 proof which opens the flavours in the glass and in the mouth very nice. Sweet notes from liquorice, orange and cinnamon are balanced by ‘sour’ notes from lemon and coriander while extra complexity and depth is added with cardamom, several peppers and star anise. And that’s just a few of them! The aftertaste is long with botanicals coming through in different stages.

Schweppes Tonic is of course known as a higher quality tonic amongst other main-stream brands, and known from slick produced commercials, including Una Thurman. They do however deserve an award for their highly dysfunctional and uninformative website, but that’s besides the point. It looks nice. Schweppes Tonic has a primarily sweet taste, with bitter notes coming through. Those come from the kinine inside. but for my taste the bitter taste lingers too long, while the sugars stay there quite long as well.

But the most important question: Will it blend Will it mix?
When using such a complex gin it is somewhat ‘risky’ to use a more commercial product but I must say they work quite nice together. I do have to add at the same time that I can credit Citadelle Gin for the larger part for this. The sweetness of Schweppes is quite strong but there’s fortunately enough room for the sweeter botanicals in Citadelle to stay upright. Because Schweppes has very little citrus notes, the taste from Citadelle has a lot of room to complement the drink. I do feel however that the long bitter taste of Schweppes holds the mix a little bit back.

Rating: 8.0/10

Method: Mix 40 ml / 1.5 oz Citadelle Gin in a longdrink, fill with icecubes and pour Schweppes Tonic over it. I tried the mix with one wedge of lime (squeezed) but am really curious what would happen when served with a slice of orange! Maybe next week!