markham's highball

1 1/2 oz Tanqueray Gin
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Simple Syrup
1/2 oz Quinine Syrup
1 Egg White
2 dash Angostura Orange Bitters

Dry shake followed by a shake with ice. Add 1 1/2 oz soda water to a highball glass then strain the shaker's contents over it. Top with ice, garnish with a lime twist, and add a straw. If you cannot have Kevin or one of the other Eastern Standard bartenders make this drink, switch the quinine syrup and soda water to 2 oz of a high quality tonic water (unless you can make your own cinchona bark syrup that is).

On Monday night after I DJ'd down the street, Andrea and I went over to Eastern Standard for dinner and drinks. For my first beverage, I asked bartender Kevin Martin about the Markham's Highball. It turns out that Kevin created it and he won a Tanqueray cocktail competition with this drink, so of course he recommended it. Subtitled, "A new T&T," the drink was a deconstructed gin and tonic crossed with an egg white Sour. Instead of tonic, the drink used a housemade cinchona-bark infused syrup and soda water. Kevin named the drink after Sir Clements Robert Markham who traveled during the mid-nineteenth century to the Andes Mountains in Peru and brought back cinchona trees to India and Ceylon. These transplants were of great import for they allowed the British Empire to make their own treatments for Malaria.
The Markham's Highball possessed a lime nose coupled with something spicy that could have been either the Angostura Orange Bitters or the quinine syrup. A lime sip was followed by gin and tonic flavors on the swallow and a pleasing orange bitter aftertaste. Moreover, the egg white donated a lot of body that was lightened by the soda water into an intriguing fizzy texture.