Gin & Tonic

Taste

Two ounces of gin, then tonic to the top of an iced highball. Quinine is bitter and the tonic is sweet, and carrying both at once is what rounds the juniper off. The lime wheel is oil and a squeeze on the way in. Cold and long, with the bitterness arriving last.

History

Quinine went into carbonated water as a malaria tonic in the 1850s, and Schweppes put out its own in 1870 under the name Indian Tonic Water. British India is where gin met it: the Raj was drinking a great deal of gin already, and the quinine dose went down easier sweetened and mixed. Difford's puts the drink in the second half of the nineteenth century and says the first pour is lost. Two ounces of gin, topped with tonic over ice, with a lime wheel.

• Difford's Guide, Gin and Tonic

Same shape, other bottles

The Highball family, with the bottle that changed.

• Scotch and Sodascotch and soda water for gin and tonic water
• Vodka & Tonicvodka for gin
• Vodka Sodavodka and soda water for gin and tonic water
• Whiskey Highballbourbon and soda water for gin and tonic water
• Campari & Tonicwith Campari
• Sherry & Tonicwith sherry