One of my favorite Yiddish words is ongepotchket (pronounced “on-geh-potch-kid”). It refers to something that is overly elaborate, needlessly complicated. That’s how I sometimes feel about presentations of Gin and Tonic. Pour one into a balloon glass if you must (personally, I don’t care for how cold that makes my drinking hand, or my nose when the ice inevitably hits the tip of it). But does a G&T really need that many garnishes and extra ingredients?
Not if it’s good gin, and quality tonic.
Now that we’re past the days when tonic water was consumed as a potion to ward off malaria, a Gin and Tonic should be a form of relaxation—easy to prepare, and more importantly, easy to sip. After all, it’s all fun and gin until a twig of rosemary pokes you in the eye.
Tonic is good now
In the past, people who claimed to not like gin, well, it might not have been the gin’s fault. Tonic water was often either too sweet, too bitter from the quinine, or too flat from the bar’s soda gun. In the past decade or so, mixer companies like Fever Tree, Q Mixers, Thomas Henry, London Essence and many others have elevated the category by developing a whole range of tonic styles to satisfy any palate, or even diet. The modern G&T craze not just relegated to Europe and the UK either. According to Businesswire, in 2019, North America was the largest tonic water market. This is good news for gin too: Statista says the global gin market is expected to grow annually by 6.71% by 2025.
Someone went through the trouble of making great gin, why ruin it?
However, it shouldn’t take a snazzy tonic to heighten the experience of sipping what already starts out as a good gin. “Flavoured tonics, while delicious with standard gins or even on their own will mask all of the subtleties in our gins,” says Michael Kain, master distiller of 6 O’Clock Gin. They recently released a line of gin and tonic RTDs highlighting the deliciously simple appeal of their London Dry. For a product such as their Brunel Gin, a 50% ABV style with spicier botanicals than their regular London Dry, Kain suggests going for a light or neutral tonic. He also prefers keeping garnishes down to just a wheel of orange, grapefruit or lemon to enhance the citrus botanicals in the gin without changing flavors. “The trouble with a dried botanical garnish is that if bitten into it can overwhelm the palate… ever chewed on a cardamom pod? Not pleasant!”
“Gin is a spirit often associated with the floral notes from juniper berries, but the other side of its flavor profile is quite citrusy and spiced, derived from the rest of the botanical array,” says David Yee, beverage director of Watershed Kitchen & Bar in Columbus, OH. For Watershed Distillery’s citrusy and warmly spiced Four Peel Gin, he says he often adds just a couple of dashes of Angostura Bitters to a G&T. “When I make a gin and tonic with this gin, I like to lean into the notes being amplified in the bottle.” I find this to be true of well-balanced, yet similarly spicy and citrus-led gins such as Amass, which has its own gingery kick.
Komasa Gin Sakurajima Komikan is made with “the world’s smallest Satsumas” from southern Japan. Bright and full of fresh orange flavor, this gin is best served with an extremely light-bodied tonic, or even simply seltzer water. Similarly, Tanqueray Rangpur is so juicy-tasting on its own that even the RTD version of it only uses soda to highlight those flavors.
Jardin d’éte is the latest release from Citadelle Gin. Founder Alexandre Gabriel describes it as a “flavor postcard” of the garden planted each year by his wife Debbie at Château de Bonbonnet in Ars, France. With delicate botanicals including a tickle of yuzu and melon, a heavily flavored tonic would spoil the transportive sensory experience. Similarly, Hendrick’s Lunar Gin, which includes botanicals such as chamomile, elderflower, rose and yarrow would make a moon bath feel like a tidal wave with more than a simple splash of tonic and fresh citrus.
Even traditional, juniper-led London Dry gins such Sipsmith, Beefeater or Ford’s Gin are at their best with a simple serve. “In the age of the Spanish Gin Tonica craze it is easy to get swept away with the Instragramable nature of the presentation,” says Sipsmith Brand Ambassador Keli Rivers. “However we need to pay homage to the century long history of juniper-led gin and bitter bubble tonics mixed together in harmony with a kiss of citrus.”
At its core, like a little black dress, a Gin and Tonic is inherently elegant without the need for too much gussying up—don’t make it ongepotchket. “Like many ‘cocktails’ that endured the dark ages of bartending, the gin and tonic has survived the fickle nature of consumer palates,” says Rivers. “Heck not only survived but it has been elevated to its rightful place at the top of the highball cocktail podium.”
