The Aperitif Guy

The drinks manufacturer Fever Tree advertises its products with the slogan "If three quarters of your G&T is the tonic, wouldn't you want it to be the best?" I can take issue with the proportions mentioned (If I were served a drink that was 75% tonic, I'd send it back!), but the principal is good. We should be paying as much attention to the quality of our mixer as we do to the gin. I've recently been experimenting with making my own tonic water. There are any number of online recipes, and I've been working my way through them to see which suits me best. All home-made tonics are made as a flavoured syrup, to which soda water is added at the point of serving. At its most basic, this can be a simple syrup of quinine, citric acid and sugar, very similar to the medicinal tonics that were first added to gin in the seventeenth century. Most online suggestions are more complex than that, using citrus peels, juices, herbs and/or spices to create a more layered exp...

A few months ago, I wrote about our visit to The Lakes Distillery and my fascination with the approach their Whiskymaker takes to maturing and blending whisky. You can read that post here:  http://blog.theaperitifguy.co.uk/2019/08/a-distillery-visit.html Whiskymaker Dhavall Gandhi (image courtesy of the Lakes Distillery) I was contacted again by the Lakes Distillery to inform me that their first widely available single malt whisky has been released. The whisky has been named The Whiskymaker's Reserve No1, the first in a series of limited releases showing off the skills of Dhavall Gandhi, the whiskymaker whose approach so fascinated me in the summer. Since the communication from The Lakes also offered a sample for tasting and review, I couldn't resist accepting! If you follow me on Twitter, you will have read my impressions the evening I opened the bottle. Having said in August that The One was not my style of whisky, preferring as I do a more peaty taste, I was exp...

I wrote a few weeks ago about the current gin boom. I follow a number of gin bloggers and try to keep up with the ever-growing array of weird and wonderful gins. One of the things I notice, especially among sponsored content, is the unshakeable assumption that you must want to drink your gin with tonic water. Gin is a fabulously versatile spirit. That's the reason it's the foundation for so many cocktails. Why do we insist on limiting it when we mix it as a long drink? Ginger ale Mixing gin with ginger ale is almost as old as mixing it with tonic water. We're back in medicinal territory here, as ginger settles the stomach and is often recommended for seasickness or nausea. Well, a touch of gin won't help the seasickness, but it'll certainly liven up the drink! Try it with one of the fruit flavoured gins - rhubarb's the obvious one - or a good London dry. Fiery ginger beer mixes better with one of the sweeter gins. Try it with Tanqueray Sevilla. ...