Let’s take a closer look at the roster:
Gin: Liquor love rises and falls like freshly-traded shares of Facebook stock. Rum, tequila, whisky—all will have their turn in the spotlight. But what makes gin so special? Well, plenty. A great vodka is distinguished by its absence of flavor, its ability to be strong and taste like nothing at the same time. Smooth is the best adjective a vodka ever knew. Gin is nothing of the sort. Made from a deep well of botanicals—juniper, most prominently, but all varieties of herbs, flowers, and spices—a gin can be as nuanced as a great glass of Bordeaux.
Tonic: Jeffery Lindenmuth, a great chronicler of wine and spirits culture, has written about the gradual decline of tonic over the years from a cheek-puckering counterpoint to aromatic gin to something more closely resembling 7-up. Thankfully, producers like Fentiman’s and Q are making tonics focused more on quinine, the bitter alkaloid extracted from tree bark that forms the traditional base of tonic, than high-fructose corn syrup.
Ice: The most overlooked part of any cocktail. Bar ice is the bane of any decent drink, melting on contact and diluting stout-hearted creations into timid shadows of their former selves. Part of the modern cocktail movement has been focused on bringing better ice to the glass. Classy cocktail lounges will use phrases like “hand-chipped ice”, which sounds ludicrous, but truth is, nothing is more vital for a good cocktail than ice that doesn’t melt—or melts at just the right pace. One of the tiny, simple pleasures of living in Spain—right up there next to street-corner churro stands and the 24-hour spinning meat dispensaries—is the ice: The cubes everywhere are bulky and rock hard; in a war between Spanish ice and your incisors, your dentist is the winner every time.