Gin and Tonic cocktail recipe

The classic Gin and Tonic is a thing of greatness. It’s perhaps the best drink you can create with two key ingredients, loved by both young and old, and everyone also has their own favourite way to enjoy it. Crisp and refreshing with the perfect amount of gin botanicals, the G&T has been around for more than 200 years and continues to garner new fans.

It has a long history, dating back to India in the 1800s. The cinchona tree, which hailed from South America, was introduced to India by the British, who colonised the nation in the 1850s. It was found that quinine – a compound extracted from wild growing cinchona bark – was a successful medicine for malaria. This was, however, extremely bitter to taste, which made it fairly uninviting. As a result, to encourage protection against malaria in India, quinine was made into a palatable tonic by dissolving it in water and adding sugar.  

Tonic eventually found its way back to the motherland as a health drink, and it wasn’t long before someone decided to add a nip of England’s spirit of the moment to their daily medicine. The gin and tonic spread like wildfire, leading Winston Churchill to once declare, “The gin and tonic drink has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.”

These days, tonic has a fraction of the quinine it used to (you’d need to drink 67 litres of G&T a day in order to prevent malaria and we do not recommend this!), but it retains its original flavour, and the union of gin and tonic lives on. The bitterness of the tonic gives it a sophisticated edge over other highball drinks that use soda as a mixer. And the abundance of gins on offer make it a never-ending source of experimentation. 

There are countless ways to put a twist on a G&T without straying far from the original blueprint. Change up your gin, tonic or garnish – or all three, for endless possibilities.

Varying the garnish will further bring out the botanicals in particular gins. For example, a London dry gin like Hendrick’s is often served with cucumber, and you could take this a step further at home by adding lime, a few basil leaves and a dash of elderflower liqueur. Other garnish combinations we love are orange slices, fresh ground nutmeg and a cinnamon stick, and a citrus-heavy gin with fresh strawberries and even a crack of black pepper.

There are also plenty of options when it comes to tonic water, with many favouring different aromatics to add a new dimension to your G&T. And when it comes to gin? Try something a little out there, like sloe gin or one of the many wine gins for a fun, unique drinking experience with plenty of colour to boot.