The Best Gin & Tonic in the World

By Richard Frisbie

I attended the 25^th Annual Salon del Gourmet in Madrid, Spain recently. It is a commercial “to the trade” specialty food showcase held in several airplane hangar-sized exhibition halls packed with great looking food.

Part of the appeal of attending these events is that one has to eat and drink (just to taste, mind you) all the gorgeous looking food and beverages being featured. And if you are going to be there all day, you have to eat a meal too. At these events it is common for a top chef to open a branch of his restaurant just for the duration of the show (called “pop ups”).

That’s where I tasted the best Gin & Tonic in the World!

Ha! Now there’s fighting words! You think you know better? OK, here’s a subjective look at gin & tonic and why I think Valerio Carrera’s is the best.

What criteria to use--best ingredients? grandest location? Best recipe? Best presentation?

Perfection is the sum of the parts. Let’s use all four, starting with the best ingredients.

Gin. The gin & tonic I’m thinking of as the best was made with London’s #1 Gin. It is one of the few made in London, old style, with a dozen botanicals, and an encounter with gardenia flowers that creates a pure blue color. The juniper and citrus nose and crisp taste live up to the number one name on the label.

Tonic. Fever Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water is made with “the finest and most authentic natural ingredients available: subtle botanical flavours, natural juices, soft spring water, cane sugar, and for the tonic waters and bitter lemon the highest quality quinine from the original chinchona trees (fever-trees).” Consistently a number one pick for tonic water, highly carbonated with a delicious fizz.

Fruit. Tiny kafir limes and a hybrid kumquat/lemon were the citrus of choice.

Location. At Bokardo Arzak, a pop-up restaurant from legendary Spanish chef Juan Arzak that appeared at the 25^th Anniversary Salon del Gourmet in Madrid, Spain, mixologist Valerio Carrera was the star of the show.

Recipe. Valerio filled a rocks glass with ice, cut 2 strips of peel from the lime—one he heated with a butane torch and wiped around the rim; the other he dropped in the glass—cut the kumquat hybrid in half and squeezed half into the glass, and half-filled the glass with gin, half with tonic. He stirred.

Presentation. Valerio is an artist, with the steady moves of a professional actor performing a complex ritual. The fruits were displayed as art, on separate pedestals, and he handled them reverently. He wore a black shirt, slacks and shoes, with a full black leather Bokardo tunic as an apron. It was all theater, the stage a glass cart pushed from table to table, with the exotic blue gin brandished as the elixir it is. The result

The result. A little bit of heaven in a glass.

Richard Frisbie is a freelance writer who frequently contributes articles to TravelLady.com, yogayaya.com, gather.com and GoNomad.com, as well as EDGE Publications, and magazines such as Adirondack Life and Life in the Finger Lakes. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

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