This zero-proof G&T will ensure all your friends can enjoy summer’s quintessential cocktail.
• 1 oz. spirit-free gin syrup (recipe below)
• 0.75 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
• 5 oz tonic water
Spirit Free Gin & Tonic
La Bicicletta Gin & Tonic
Bright, fresh and lightly herbal, this G&T will whisk you to an Italian piazza.
• 2 oz La Bicicletta Gin
• 0.5 oz lemon juice
• 0.25 oz simple syrup
• 4 oz tonic water
Royal Gin & Tonic
Butterfly pea flowers add a royal purple hue to this citrusy-floral G&T.
• 2 oz. Royal Gin
• 0.5 oz mandarin juice
• 0.25 oz. simple syrup
• 4 oz tonic water
DIY Gin & Tonic
Make summer’s favourite cocktail your very own with these bespoke ideas
Gin is unlike any other spirit. Simply put, gin is a distilled grain mash that produces a neutral alcohol or vodka. The spirit is then redistilled with botanicals, herbs and spices to achieve the final product. It doesn’t rely on aging in oak barrels like whisky, and it doesn’t rely on one agricultural product to achieve its flavour, like agave for tequila. The infusion process will determine the flavour profile of each gin.
In other words, gin is essentially a botanical-flavoured vodka. And that means, even though not very many of us will ever have access to a still, we can make our own quality gins by working with infusions.
The Alchemist Summer 2019
Keep cool: The summer issue of The Alchemist is out this week.
The 12th edition of B.C.’s only magazine dedicated to cocktail and spirits culture returns with everything you need to quench your thirst this summer.
The Cosmopolitan
John Burns, our man at the bar, reveals the not-so-guilty pleasures of drinking alone
A man walks into a bar. He’s alone; it’s the same old story. Maybe he’s looking for company, or to get out of that hotel and watch the game, or just to unwind. So he orders a drink and it’s the right drink and it’s made well. He takes a breath, a sip. A breath, a sip.
Even in the age of 24/7 social check-ins and check-outs, it’s still possible to head to a bar and just…be. It’s one of my signal pleasures when I travel, which I do often for work. (I’m writing this on a plane now as it happens, en route to a bar.) After a wall of meetings, I want some alone time, but not alone alone. Follow? I want bustle around me but stillness within—perhaps that’s one definition of the right cocktail at the right spot.
Exactly a year ago, I was sitting in Munich’s Haus der Kunst, the gallery Hitler built to glorify Nazi art. On the main floor of that austere relic is one of the city’s best watering holes. There’s something both seedy and worldly about the Goldene Bar. Rattan chairs cluster conspiratorially around tables onto which fat candles slowly melt. Servers are friendly, children come and go, everyone’s wearing scarves and exactly nobody glances at the walls and their patently racist gilt paintings (original, from the ’30s) depicting the countries of the spirits served. It’s voyeur heaven, made perfect by a Cosmopolitan jolted by local bitters and (a quirky touch) a shot of Munich’s famed helles beer.