Gin & Tonic — gin and tonic is two ingredients — so why do most

A gin and tonic is two ingredients — so why do most bartenders make it taste like sadness?

Ingredients

• 2 oz gin
• 4 oz tonic water
• 1 lime wheel
• Garnish: a lime wheel or wedge

Method

That’s it. Two ingredients. But the details matter more than you think. Start with a highball glass filled with ice — big cubes, not crushed ice that’ll melt fast and water down your drink. Add your gin first. The gin you choose changes everything — a London Dry like Tanqueray gives you juniper punch, while something like Hendrick’s brings cucumber and rose. Pour it over the ice. Now the tonic water — and this is where most people mess up. The tonic needs to be ice cold, straight from the refrigerator, and it needs to have some bite to it. Fever-Tree, Q Tonic, or even Schweppes will work, but skip the diet versions. Pour the tonic slowly down the side of the glass so it doesn’t lose its fizz. Give it one gentle stir with a bar spoon. You want just enough mixing to combine the spirits without killing the bubbles.

Serve

Serve this in a tall highball glass with plenty of ice. Express the lime wheel over the drink to release the oils, then drop it in. Some bartenders add the lime to the rim, but in the glass works better — you get lime flavor in every sip.

Pro Tip

The gin and tonic saved the British Empire. That’s not hyperbole — it’s medical history. British troops in India were dying from malaria, so military doctors prescribed quinine, a bitter compound from cinchona bark that prevented the disease. Problem was, quinine tasted awful. Some clever officer figured out that mixing it with gin and water made the medicine go down easier. By the 1860s, British officers were drinking gin and tonics at sunset across colonial outposts from Bombay to Burma. They called it their daily dose of medicine, but really, they’d just invented the world’s most refreshing cocktail. The drink became so associated with the British military that when India gained independence in 1947, gin and tonic consumption dropped by sixty percent in London. Today, most people think it’s just gin with any old tonic water. That’s where they’re wrong.