There are some milestones in life that we’ve all experienced and can relate to. Getting your driver’s license. Holding onto your first paycheck. Finding out that tonic water has calories.

Yes, my dear, I’m afraid it’s true: the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, tonic water is not just water with quinine, and your father was the one that accidentally ran over Pookie when you were 8.

Neil: “What? No, you’re making things up. Tonic water doesn’t have any calories. It’s tonic water!”
Me: “Why do you think gin & tonics are so sweet and delicious? It’s not gin & magic.” (note to self: create a cocktail called Gin & Magic)
*One wikipedia article later*
Neil: “Tonic water has as many calories as soda? That’s bullshit!”
Me: “Oh trust me, I know.”

Tonic water, usually sweetened with, of course, high fructose corn syrup in the US, has around 120-140 calories per 12oz can, which is pretty much exactly the same as any other soda that rots your teeth and gives you diabetes. It did, at one point, consist merely of carbonated water with quinine, back when it was used as an anti-malarial by British forces in tropical countries. I’d love to see if I could actually find some tonic water that’s still made this way, with no sweetener and massive amounts of quinine so that 1) I can drink G&Ts instead of take anti-malarials when/if I travel to the appropriate place (like, outside my Manhattan apartment in 20 years), and 2) just to see what the original G&T taste was like. Btw, one of the above statements is completely fallacious, but I’ll leave it up to you and your doctor to figure out which.

Anyhow, after a revelation like that, we had to drown our caloric sorrows with some gin & tonics. We picked up tonic water from Whole Foods, which sells their own 365 label of tonic water, for the reasonable price of $2ish/6 cans. The one over at Union Square also sells Q tonic water (read: designer tonic water made ’specially for G&Ts) for $11.99/4 bottles, but I’m not made out of enough gold to buy it (I might pick it up next time though, just out of curiosity and financial masochism).

Matchup between our current in-house gin brands…! All G&Ts were made with 1.5oz gin to 3oz tonic water (1:2 ratio), poured over ice and garnished. 1 can of tonic water makes exactly 4 G&Ts.

The Great Hyperbole-Free Gin & Tonic Matchup - 2008!

Brand	Hendrick’s	Bombay Sapphire	Tanqueray Rangpur
Garnish	Floating cucumber slices	Wedge of lime	Wedge of lime
Verdict	It’s… surprisingly very good and refreshing! We both thought the taste of Hendrick’s by itself was… “weird”, but with the floating cucumber slices in particular, it became the best “summer”-ish drink. Great balance.	Great juniper/botanical tones cutting through the sweetness of the tonic water. A classic gin & tonic	This just didn’t taste right. The lime infusion with the gin just ends up feeling too… harsh, and the tonic water didn’t help round that out
Rating

To summarize: Hendrick’s puts an interesting twist on the G&T, Bombay Sapphire makes a classic, and Tanqueray Rangpur is a dud. Till next time, friends!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Cocktails, gin.