The Best Of Monica Roccaforte

The gin and tonic and Swedish style and elegance



I declare a firm admirer of gin tonic. I take this famous brew regularly over the last ten years. Maybe more. My hobby is such that I've tried in many ways. For example, some years ago, I discovered that with a flick of campari has a particular flair. But he soon returned to the classic formula, albeit with a few drops of Angostura. Particular mix with me for a little less than three years.

I have also tried various brands of gin and tonic five or six. Finally I decided that Hendricks is the one I prefer and that the tone does not matter. But the truth is that the brand of gin is not essential in this regard. Matter, but not everything.

It makes sense to go try and find new combinations, new variations on same subject. What is not justified is that there are 300 brands of gin! in the English market. Nor is justified that many of these gins, born at the mercy of the fashion for gin tonic, require a kind of masterly to be consumed properly.

few weeks ago I went to take a gin and tonic with a friend in the cafeteria of a popular hotel in Malaga. One of these places that now call themselves after lunch, ie, a site that is going to take a coffee or a copazo after a business lunch usually. When I asked for a gin and tonic Hendricks of the waiter, I saw the guy consulted behind the pillar that divided the bar into two. Then removed from the refrigerator a bottle of a trend that had not seen in my life, began to remove the skin of a cucumber and took a drink a little bizarre to which he added ice cubes.

The guy was following the "recipe" that is supposed to master to be followed for any customer ordering a gin and tonic with Hendricks. That was the chop who consulted behind the column. A recipe that marks must be exactly what each type of gin tonic. "Fever tree with orange slice and glass pot for G Vine and Q tonic, cucumber and peel snifter for Hendircks .

I have no doubt that by the restaurant manager that level of detail in customer service is quite an achievement, but for me it was an insult as a habitual consumer of gin tonic .

The waiter, so well versed in the production of gin tonic as the highest expression of contemporary snobbery, unaware of the existence of the narrowness, the basic ingredient for truly professional bartender. The man knows what is to follow in the footsteps of what he says the list of ingredients to prepare a drink to taste the new connoisseurs of after lunch, but then not take him out, his is the chief tail.

course the above is only an allegory of the complicated life of ours.