Cocktail Catwalk
What’s your favourite cocktail? Why?
Seemingly simple questions, but, so long as the answers aren’t “frozen strawberry daiquiri” and “because you can’t taste the alcohol” respectively, it opens up a whole array of different areas of discussion (just for the record – we have nothing against strawberry Daiquiris as such apart from the ones that taste only of Slush Puppies).
Most people will have a strong idea about what spirit base they like in the drink, and will pick their drink accordingly. But if they wanted to try and create a drink using their favourite spirit themselves, it’s not immediately obvious which is the best pairing of flavours, and which taste combos will give the spirit the best platform, let it really come into its own?
To establish which flavour pairings are a no-no, and which are a match made in heaven, we’ve talked to some of the best bartenders out there to find out their thoughts.
In this edition we are looking at gin, finding out what our bartenders think is THE perfect pairing – the supermodel; a list of gin-friendly mixers/pairings that will work with most gins – The Little Black Dress (LBD); and the flavours that are to be avoided at all costs as they will kill the gin – the tartan cat suite (we can’t think of much worse fashion-wise, but open to suggestions).
We spoke to Nathan Merrimen (NM), bartender The American Bar, The Savoy; Jamie Stephenson (JS) World Champion Bartender and Rémy Martin Style Master 2007, co-founder and Principal Trainer of The Bar Academy; Paul Stevens (PS), Bar Manager at Mandarin Bar Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London; Liam Brown (LB) co-owner of Seven at Brixton; and Patsy Christie (PC) of Maxxium UK.
According to our expert panel, we proudly introduce our Gin Cocktail Supermodels:
NM: The Gin Martini, extra Dry with a Twist. Gin choice: Tanqueray 10, No.3 or Bombay original.
JS: The Gin Martini, medium dry (4:1). Gin choice: Citadelle gin with Dolin Chambery Vermouth or Aviation with No.209.
PS: Aviation,Bronx, Negroni or G&T. Many people are turning back to the Martini over the Vodkatini but the choice of gin is paramount, both in choosing, or creating, the perfect cocktail.
LB: The Bramble with SW4 gin. This has the base of all the great cocktails – a delicate balance of sweet and sour and the berries help bring out the flavour of the junipers. Served with a blueberry muffin, this is quintessentially English!
PC: G&T is the classic, perfect gin cocktail in a highball, but if you are looking for something a little more complex I would go for a Negroni with no.3 gin, which is a heavy, classic style of gin. The Negroni works perfectly before or after dinner, as a digestif or aperitif.
And the LBD of gin drinks:
NM: Different flavours work well with different gins. Plus there are also different styles of gins – London Dry, old Tom,Plymouth gin and Genever. As gin is made of botanicals, no gin is the same so each one has a different flavour profile… cucumber with Martin Millers, Grapefruit with Tanqueray as they match the botanicals.
JS: Citrus. Gin has plenty of character so it can withstand being paired with all kinds of strong flavours, it also transcends savoury, sweet, spicy and fruity categories so providing you take care in choosing the right Gin, you can mix it with almost anything.
PS: Gin is tremendously rewarding when its flavours are knitted with the right modifiers, which is why gin is the preferred base for skilled, creative bartenders. Creating the perfect sour ratio with lemon and sugar will reward any gin like nothing else, but the enormous variety of gins available now means that delicate cocktails such as Martinis and even G&T’s require a greater awareness of the product and alternative methods of mixing. I’ll give you a recent example: Two new gins that we are hoping to list at Mandarin Bar at the moment have completely different approaches – Gilpin’s is Matthew Gilpin’s personal vision to create a ‘modern’ London Dry gin and he has increased the number of dry herbal botanicals in his gin to produce a flinty, steely-edged gin that just loves sharp citrusy flavours, so we make a fine, complex martini with a nice lemon twist (or acidic silverskin onion!) and the job is done, the martini is perfectly balanced and utterly intriguing.
From the other direction comes Sloane’s gin which is a terrifically complex gin where each of the botanicals are individually distilled to use only the heart of each. This gin is round and oily and full of citrus already and will be attracting a lot of attention from Plymouth Gin lovers but it rejects a lot of the treatment given to the Gilpin’s, to the point of having to find another garnish for a G&T. So we put this together with bitters and aromatisers and Bingo! perfect balance; the layers of clear botanical oils wrap themselves around the hard barks and herbs in the aromatisers and they compliment each other as a result – I’d even try this one with other fatty flavours such as dark chocolate.
I can’t go without also putting in a word for Sipsmith’s who didn’t set out to create anything other than the archetypal London Dry gin designed for mixing and ended up doing way more than that. For all-round adaptability, the Desert Island Gin if you like, it is unsurpassed; and all that is in the way that the different botanical elements are carefully held in balance with such a variety of modifiers.
LB: homemade lime-ade. You can make this as sweet our as sour as you choose for your palette and for me lime does not overpower a drink as much as lemonade does allowing the (large) measure of gin to do the talking. Serve with a lime twist.
PC: There is nothing better than gin and botanic water with lime, there is no mixer that matches better with gin.
And finally, the no-no:
NM: Coke kills everything and only enhances your dental bill!!
JS: I don’t think you can kill Gin with anything per se, the biggest effect is down to ratios. If you put too much mixer in particularly with a light Gin and it will ruin it. As I have already mentioned I think Gin will mix with anything but there has to be sufficient care to make sure the drink stays balanced.
PS: I’m hard pushed to think of a nice sweet gin cocktail – so that accounts for coke, lemonade, ginger ales and the like as well as creams and syrups. Gin is also rarely mixed with other base spirits successfully. In both cases the interplay of the botanical, sweet, citrus, bitter are so dominating that very definite counterpoints are needed – if you think about most other spirits that we use they are essentially nothing more than eaux-de-vie, either purified or aged to some point. Nothing really is then reprocessed and altered to the same extent as gin.
LB: Beer and gin, a.k.a. The Bin. Created by a caring friend keen to try a little bit of mixology themselves. Bit of a no-brainer there…
PC: Because the flavour properties of gin are so unique, they will come out in most drinks, I have a very good friend that drinks gin & coke, and gin and orange juice is excellent too. I would definitely stay away from ginger beer, the spices camouflage the botanicals in the gin.
