Okay, scratch that. I used to hate gin. I suppose it's because I hadn't ever had truly good gin, and I went for years and years without having any gin cocktails at all. When I thought of gin, my mind would bring back Orwell's description of "Victory Gin" from 1984.
In early 2000 I became a born-again cocktail aficionado and began doing lots of studying and research about cocktails and their history. There were many cocktail recipes -- very old and very new -- that looked intriguing but contained gin. Feh, I thought. I don't like gin.
I then decided that I needed to give gin a chance, at least once. I did a little reading, and it seemed that the general consensus was that Bombay Sapphire was the best gin you can buy. It didn't rely completely on the flavor of juniper berries (which I don't particularly care for), but had 9 other botanicals and herbs to flavor the liquor. (The beautiful blue bottle lists the ingredients as angelica root from Saxony, coriander seeds from Morocco, cassia bark from "Indo-China", cubeb berries from Java, grains of paradise from West Africa, almonds and lemon peel from Spain, liquorice [sic] from China, and finally juniper berries and orris root from Italy.)
This stuff has promise, I thought. I wasn't going to dive straight into making a Martini with it, but I thought a gin and tonic might be the trick.
The verdict -- Bombay Sapphire make an absolutely lovely gin and tonic. It has a wonderul aroma which wafts into your head as soon as you open the bottle. It's recognizably gin, obviously, but the juniper berries do not overpower. The flavor is complex and delicate, and it makes me fairly excited to try out all the grand old gin cocktails (some of which were popular in the 30s but are unheard of now) ... a world of experimentation right there in my bar! (Gotta love that.)
As an extra, added bonus -- imagine how nifty that vapor blue bottle will look on your cocktail table.
I enjoyed the drink so much that I was ready to try another cocktail that mixed the gin more simply, without diluting it with so much tonic water, but then I thought about how I could improve upon the simple the gin and tonic. I'd read about how one aficionado of the drink added the juice of a lime, and a couple of drops of Angostura bitters. Being a New Orleanian and an aficionado of things local -- including my favorite cocktail, the Sazerac -- I decided to change this to Peychaud's bitters, and to add a few healthy shakes of it.
The resultant drink was magnificent, another order of magnitude above a standard gin and tonic, even though the change was fairly subtle. I could drink lots of these, on a hot summer's day, reading a good book ...
This is a more elegant version of the gin and tonic, so I named it after one of the most elegant avenues in the city of New Orleans. (Is it pretentious of me to name a drink that's basically a slight variation on a gin and tonic? Damned right it is. But I think that all can be forgiven in the presence of this gin.) Remember, though -- you can make this drink with cheap gin, and you can substitute Angostura bitters for the Peychaud's ... but what would be the point? That would be just another common gin and tonic.
The St. Charles - not your garden-variety gin and tonic
Ingredients:
1. The juice of one lime, freshly squeezed (if you use some bottled swill like RealLime, I'll come into your dreams at night and taunt you mercilessly)
2. 2 ounces Bombay Sapphire gin (Use this gin. Don't use cheap gin)
3. 5 ounces Canada Dry tonic water (my preferred brand)
Fill a highball glass almost to the top with cracked ice cubes. Add the lime juice, then the gin. Fill with the tonic water, then add the bitters (don't be shy). Rub the lime wedge around the rim of the glass, then add it as a garnish. Swizzle, then serve the drink with the swizzle stick. Accept your guests' compliments graciously.
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