gin daisy

1 1/2 oz Gin (Berkshire Mountain Distillers Ethereal Gin)
1/2 Lemon (~3/4 oz Juice)
1 tsp Grenadine
1 dash Pastis (optional)

Shake with ice and strain into a highball glass filled with ice cubes. Top with soda water, garnish with a lemon twist, and add straw. Using an egg white is another option for this drink.

On Friday night, I needed to find a cocktail that used lemon juice to utilize our channel-knifed up lemon left over from making the Trident. In addition, we were excited to try out our purchase of the new Berkshire Mountain Distillers gin, Ethereal. The distillery has a standard gin, Greylock, and recently bolstered their repertoire with this more unique style. The concept for the Ethereal is to be "brimming with botanicals" and to switch up the herbal line-up with each batch (signified by a different label color). Upon tasting the gin on its own, it is much lower on the juniper berry piny notes than most gins out there so Ethereal might make for a good "give gin another chance" gin. There was a decent mouthful of citrus peel flavors and something rather violet flower-like which might be orris root. I wish the distillery would list either the botanicals or tasting notes for each batch to make the gin less mysterious to the cautious buyer and more tempting to the gin lover who seeks out certain botanicals over others (*). Then again, the intrigue did lure me into trying it out.


For a drink, we opted for making a Gin Daisy from our Patrick Gavin Duffy 1975 edition of The Official Mixer's Manual. The recipe there gives the options of including a dash of Pernod and an egg white, and we opted for the former to give the drink a little more complexity. Duffy's Daisy recipe is also loose on the amount of alcohol (1 1/2 to 3 oz) and suggests applejack, brandy, gin, rum, or whiskey as base spirit choices. Overall, our Gin Daisy was very tart and refreshing. The scant amount of grenadine provided a pleasing pink hue but did not provide that much sweetness to balance the lemon juice like the quarter or half ounce of simple syrup does in a Collins. The pastis did serve to add a little extra character and worked well with the gin's botanicals. Moreover, I somewhat regret not doing the egg white option although it would have masked some of the gin taste we were trying to fully appreciate this time around.

(*) Postnote 2/9/10: The newest batch of Ethereal Gin is out with a pink label. It is stronger in the rose elements and less "medicinal" as the rep described it. Perhaps the newer batch is going after the Hendrick's market? Regardless, the new sales rep gave me the okay to list the botanicals (7 in Greylock and 14 in Ethereal):

Ethereal and Greylock: juniper berry, orange peel, orris root, cardamom, cinnamon bark, angelica root, licorice.
Ethereal only: lemon peel, black pepper, cubeb berry, rose hips, elderberry, nutmeg, spearmint.