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Illustration of a Gin Basil Smash

Illustration — generated, not photographed

Gin Basil Smash

Bruised basil turns this green and gives it a peppery, herbal lift; underneath sits a lemon sour, tart with just enough sugar to round it off. The basil is loud, so the gin needs juniper and spine to be heard at all — softer floral styles tend to vanish into the leaf.

60 ml
gin
22.5 ml
lemon
22.5 ml
sugar
10 leaves
basil

Measures — IBA official specification

Basil shaken hard with gin, lemon and syrup, double strained over ice.

The drink and how it got here

This one has an author, a bar and a date, which almost no classic does. Jörg Meyer made it in 2008 at Le Lion in Hamburg, and it travelled far enough fast enough that people now assume it is old. It is younger than the smartphone.

It is a smash — the family where fruit or herbs are muddled into the drink rather than laid on top of it — and Meyer built it off the Whiskey Smash, swapping in gin and using basil where the older drink used mint. Everything under the herb is an ordinary sour: spirit, lemon, sugar.

He first sold it as the Gin Pesto, which tells you what it smelled like from the other end of the bar, and changed the name later. The one it ended up with stuck to the whole category of green herb drinks that came after it.

One guide here rather than three, for the same reason the Bramble gets one: a drink this recent with a living recipe has had no time to drift, and inventing an evolution for it would be inventing history. The only real choice left to you is over ice or straight up, and the last step covers both.

Read from Gin basil smash — Wikipedia (History, Preparation)

As Meyer built it

2008 — Le Lion, Hamburg · IBA official specification

  1. A generous handful of fresh green basil leaves being dropped into the base of a metal cocktail shaker on a dark walnut bar top.

    1 Ten basil leaves, and keep the stems. Most of the aroma is in them, and most people throw them away.

  2. A cut half lemon being squeezed over the shaker of basil leaves, juice running down onto them, a small plain jug of clear syrup standing beside it.

    2 Lemon and sugar in with the leaves, before the gin. The acid starts pulling flavour out of the basil while you are still working.

  3. A wooden muddler pressing down on the basil leaves in the shaker, the leaves bruised and darkening, the liquid around them turning green.

    3 Press, do not grind. Bruised basil gives you the smell; shredded basil gives you a bitter green taste you cannot get back out.

  4. Pouring a clear colourless spirit from a plain blank bottle into the shaker of muddled green basil.

    4 Sixty of gin, in last. A juniper-forward bottle is not fighting the basil here — the two of them are making the same argument.

  5. A sealed metal cocktail shaker held raised just after a hard shake, heavily frosted and beaded with condensation.

    5 Shake hard with ice, and keep it short. A long shake waters it down and the basil goes flat.

  6. Pouring a cloudy green-gold drink through a fine mesh strainer resting on the rim of a short tumbler packed with crushed ice, flecks of green leaf caught in the mesh.

    6 Double strain through fine mesh, over ice or straight up in a chilled glass. Either is correct — leaving the shredded leaf in is not.

These images are generated, not photographed

From the collection — 1 bottle

  • Hendrick's

    Hendrick's cucumber-and-rose infusion runs with bruised basil instead of fighting it, and 44% carries the sugar and lemon.