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Illustration of a Pink Gin & Tonic Spritz

Illustration — generated, not photographed

Pink Gin & Tonic Spritz

A long, dry, faintly bitter drink: the angostura tints the gin pink and pulls a spiced edge through the tonic's quinine, while the sparkling wine adds weight and a dry, yeasty tartness. Grapefruit sharpens the finish. The gin needs juniper and backbone to read through three competing bitternesses.

40 ml
gin
3 dashes
angostura bitters
60 ml
sparkling wine
to top
tonic water
grapefruit

Measures — house pour, not sourced

Bitters-tinted gin built over ice, tonic and sparkling wine, grapefruit slice.

The drink and how it got here

This is two old drinks stacked on each other. Underneath is the pink gin — Plymouth gin and Angostura bitters, taken by the Royal Navy against sea sickness after Dr Siegert formulated the bitters in 1824, and drunk for pleasure in England by the 1870s. On top of that goes tonic, which arrived by the same route: quinine against malaria, on sale from 1858, mixed with gin because on its own it was too bitter to swallow.

The middle step is documented and is not ours. A pink gin and tonic is a standard order — four dashes of Angostura and two shots of gin in a highball, topped with tonic over ice and garnished with lemon — and it is simply what happens when the two naval habits meet in one glass.

The spritz layer is the modern part and the only part we added: sparkling wine alongside the tonic, in a big goblet, the way an Aperol spritz is built. It brings weight and a dry yeasty edge that tonic alone does not have, and it drops the strength of the glass without making it taste watery.

Two guides, then. First the sourced pink gin and tonic — a complete drink, and the one to make if you only want one thing. Then our spritz on top of it. The order matters more than it looks: bitters go in before anything fizzy, because you cannot stir them in afterwards without knocking the life out of the glass.

Read from Pink gin — Wikipedia (Cocktail origins, Cocktail variants — 'pink gin and tonic') · Gin and tonic — Wikipedia (History)

Pink gin and tonic

The standard order this is built on · Pink gin — Wikipedia, Cocktail variants

  1. Dark red drops falling from a small plain blank dropper bottle into the base of an empty tall highball glass on a dark walnut bar top.

    1 Four dashes of Angostura, into the empty glass. Bitters go first in anything fizzy — you cannot stir them in later without killing the bubbles.

  2. Pouring a clear colourless spirit from a plain blank bottle onto the bitters in the highball, the liquid turning clear pink.

    2 The gin next, and the colour comes up straight away. Two shots is the usual pour for this one.

  3. Large clear ice cubes being dropped into the pink liquid in the highball, filling the glass to the top.

    3 Ice after the spirit, and fill it. A full glass of ice melts slower than a half-empty one, which is the opposite of what most people assume.

  4. Tonic being poured down the length of a bar spoon held inside the pink-filled highball, a wedge of lemon lying on the bar beside it.

    4 Tonic down the spoon, lemon on top. That is the whole documented drink — everything after this is ours.

The spritz

House — sparkling wine on top of the same base · House build — our own recipe on this page, not a documented classic

  1. Dark red drops falling from a small plain blank dropper bottle into the bowl of a large empty stemmed goblet on the bar.

    1 Same first move in a bigger glass. Three dashes here rather than four — there is more going in on top of them.

  2. Pouring a clear colourless spirit from a plain blank bottle into the goblet, the liquid taking on a pale pink tint.

    2 Forty of gin, a shorter pour than the highball takes. This is a long drink, not a strong one.

  3. Large clear ice cubes filling the goblet to the brim over the pale pink liquid.

    3 Fill the bowl with ice. The wide glass is doing the same job it does in a Spanish copa — holding the smell where you can reach it.

  4. Pale sparkling wine being poured slowly down the inside wall of the goblet, fine bubbles climbing through the pink liquid.

    4 Sixty of sparkling wine, down the side of the glass. Poured into the middle it foams over and loses half its fizz in the sink.

  5. Tonic being poured down a long bar spoon into the goblet, filling it, a wedge of pink grapefruit lying on the bar beside it.

    5 Tonic down the spoon to fill it, then a slice of grapefruit. Three bitter things in one glass — quinine, Angostura, grapefruit pith — and the gin has to be heard over all of them.

These images are generated, not photographed

From the collection — 1 bottle

  • Filliers

    Dry Gin 28 Pink

    The berry sweetness of Filliers 28 Pink and its modest 37.5% mean it dilutes long without thinning out, so a tall spritz keeps the fruit forward.