America Loves Lists! Top 5 Gin Drinks

Gin.  It’s what’s for dinner – when you’re an anorexic alcoholic.  Soooo Happy Holidays!  Here are my 5 favorite gin cocktails.

5. Classic Gin Martini – This  is the quintessential drink for Prohibition-era businessmen and women who like to seductively eat olives.

• 1/2 oz Dry Vermouth
• 2 oz gin, chilled
• Garnish with olives, lemon twists, or those ‘lil onions
• Add ice, pretension, if desired.

4.  Lotus Cocktail – My rent may be too damn high, but I had my way with a version of this drink at some unmemorable Chicago eatery this summer. Basically – take the classic gin’ n juice recipe: remove the juice & grab the following: an expensive yet awkward glass, an organic vegetable, some other stuff. Finally, downsize to a Volkswagen product playing St. Vincent on satellite radio. You’re now ready to make the Lotus – and it’s pretty damn delicious.

• 1 1/2 oz Gin
• 3/4 oz. Domaine du Canton
• 4 thin slices of cucumber
• 2 oz club soda

Park the VW. Get past having missed the UPS guy and go inside. He’ll come back.  Pre-chill a cocktail glass and set aside on the granite counter. Cut three slices of cucumber into quarters and muddle in a mixing glass with the Canton. Not 1. Not 2. 3.  After sufficiently pulverized, add gin and a level scoop of ice.  It’s about to get noisy so turn up the television to hear the episode of Dr. Who you recorded. Shake for about 15 seconds.  Turn down television to appropriate level. Strain carefully into pre-chilled glass careful to limit the amount of pulp (you’re really doing it!).  Add soda to icy, crushed cucumber mixture. Swirl and strain again (I’m serious). Garnish with the remaining cuke slice. Get over yourself.

3.  Tom Collins – 3 problems with this drink: (a) it’s delicious;  (b) it’s fairly Hitchcockian, so merely ordering one puts you in danger, and possibly the trunk of a ’46 Hudson; (c) it’s really difficult to order plural drinks (Tom Collinseses) without an honest bartender contemplating cutting you off.  Experienced 1st hand at Green Mill a couple of months back.

• 2 oz. gin
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• 1 slice orange (for orangeness)
• 3 oz Club Soda
• 1 Maraschino Cherry
• 1 tsp Superfine Sugar (for America!)

In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine the gin, lemon juice, and sugar. Shake well. Strain into a collins glass almost filled with ice cubes. Add the club soda. Stir and garnish with the cherry and the orange slice. Say something dated and sexist. Repeat until feeling the margins of a Blackout.

2.  Gin Gimlet – Gin and lime are like Gerald & Betty Ford – they each have their faults, but you can’t imagine one without the other as one suits the other so perfectly.

• 2 oz Gin
• 1 oz Lime Juice (you can go fresh, but let’s be honest – Rose’s gets the job done)
• 1 wedge of Lime
• some say add a dash of simple syrup. I don’t really care what you do. It might be best to let your uppity mixologist friend make the call.

I usually drink this in a rocks glass, but most gimlet drinkers prefer the following:  Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wedge.

1.  Bee’s Knees – If gin and lime are like Gerald and Betty Ford,  gin + honey are like Detectives Briscoe & Curtis.  They compliment eachother perfectly and will fuck you up if you’re trying  to scapegoat the step-child’s death on your husband’s mistress.

• 2 oz gin;
• 3/4 oz honey syrup;
• 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice;