How to make a gin and tonic, if you have a lot of time and chemical equipment on your hands

Tonight I stopped into the Martin Miller's Gin & Tonic competition at Beretta. The winner of the event was Jennifer Colliau of Slanted Door, who had some sort of bitters frozen into ice that slowly changed the flavor of the drink as it melted. Clever.

But the most interesting drink was designed by Joe Parrilli who works at Bacar. To make his drink, all you need to do is:

1. Make some dehydrated lime slices


2. Create spheres of tonic with gold cake decoration using molecular mixology techniques



3. Make some gelatin gin and tonic


4. Carbonate some gin


5. Assemble the drink and enjoy

So go ahead, it's easy!

London and Plymouth pics

Are now online. Get 'em all here.

Gin + Dinner = Ginner

Orson in San Francisco is hosting a Gin and Stone pairing dinner on June 11 to celebrate fresh stone fruit. (Gin you can celebrate all year round.) I've seen dinner pairings with bourbon, rum, absinthe, and even vodka, but this is the first gin and food pairing I've noticed. Check out the menu here.

Gin on the vine

Immediately after my press trip to Jerez to study sherry, I flew to Bordeaux to learn about G'Vine gin. As far as I know, G'Vine is the only gin made from grape spirit instead of grain spirit, which gives it a round, soft texture and a touch of sweetness. It also has a huge burst of floral aroma coming from distilled vine flowers. This press trip was centered around seeing the vine flower harvest, but unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and the flowers weren't yet in bloom.

I flew in to Bordeaux and got a hotel room for the night, skipped dinner and slept from 8PM until 8AM recovering sleep and liver function from the last trip.

The next morning I met the group- there were just five of us in total- and we headed to our hotel half-way between Bordeaux and Cognac. Our hotel, Chateau de Rimbaud, was more of a castle (which is always nice) that was filled with antiques and wallpaper that matched the curtains, bedspreads, and everything else in the room. Busy, but beautiful.

That afternoon we had a short mixology session with G'vine. Because the gin is so floral, I find it overwhelming served in a martini and don't think it mixes as well as other gins with tonic water. I learned on this trip that champagne works better than tonic with this product (grape with grape, after all), and that the Spanish make their tonic water go flat before drinking it- we didn't try that but I could see it working.

After a lazy afternoon we had a lazy dinner at the castle, and a good night's sleep. Then we were off to Cognac. We visited the distillery where G'Vine is made, which is a cognac distillery that produces one percent of all Cognac in France, in addition to several other products. It was the first time I've seen Cognac stills, so I was a bit overexcited, but soon we were off to the traditional pot and column stills actually used for G'Vine.

We drove out to a vineyard and fondled a vine, as the founder of EuroWineGate showed us where the blossoms would be if only they were blossoming. We all offered to stay two more weeks in the castle waiting for this to happen, but apparently G'vine's generosity doesn't extend quite that far.

We had lunch at the funky and delicious La Ribaudiere restaurant near Cognac (you can pull up to it by boat if that's how you roll), where they made gelato in different flavors that are found in the gin. (gin-lato?) Then we spent about an hour wandering through the city of Cognac. I found it nice and full of very old buildings, but smaller than I had imagined.

The same is not true of Bordeaux, where we stayed the night. Bordeaux is huge and cosmopolitan and appears magnificent in the evening we spent there. We went out for dinner on one of the many pedestrian streets, had a beer later, and called it a trip.

Now I have to make the next trip home. It's gonna be a doozy. See you in a few days.

In the meantime, feel free to look at all my trip photos here.

Gin judging

Last night I helped judge the Hendrick's gin cocktail competition at Rye. Hendrick's likes to make things interesting in their events and marketing, so for this contest bartenders not only had to create a cocktail showcasing one of the botanicals in Hendrick's, they also had to recite a limerick to go along with it. The limericks were weighted heavily in the judging but luckily our top contenders were strong in both the poetic and taste categories.

The winner of the contest was Sierra Zimei of the Seasons Bar at the Four Seasons with her Secret Garden cocktail consisting of grapefruit, cucumber, lime, and cilantro syrup with a healthy dose of gin mixed in. She won a round-trip air ticket anywhere in the States, which unfortunately she's not using to join us at Tales of the Cocktail but opting for a baseball game with her husband instead. I believe that marriage should not get in the way of cocktailing, but then again that may be a reason I'm still single. I'll ponder that over drinks later.

After the contest, I went out to dinner with Julio Bermejo of Tommy's, Charlotte Voissey of Hendrick's, Rob Renteria of Martini House, Greg Lindgren of Rye, and some other friends of Julio. Joey and Eddie's (the former Moose's) has a short cocktail menu, from which I chose the Bronx Negroni, which is a regular Negroni with a touch of Averna. Very good.

Gin 2.0

My friend Cior sent me a link to a talk at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco by Clay Shirky, because the talk referenced gin. (My friends know me well.) The talk was about how we dissipate the free time and mental energy ("cognitive surplus") we have after working. In the beginning of the industrial revolution when the masses streamed into London, Shirky says consumption of gin was the way of dealing with the new pressures of city living. Post WWII, television became the new post-work brain relaxer, and nowadays, collaborative web projects like Wikipedia are a productive way to spend those mental energy cycles.

So really, the talk isn't booze-related at all. But after reading it, I could use a nice relaxing martini.

Booze News Roundup

I'm still catching up on work after travel, but here are some items out of my inbox and into your eye socket:

• Domaine Carneros received their organic certification, making them California's first organic sparkling winery
  
• Pernod Ricard bought Absolut, and will likely get rid of Plymouth gin and Fris vodka it bought as part of the deal (clarification edit: sell to another spirits company, not dissolve the brands!)
  
• Gin is in! I guess it finally hit Los Angeles, anyway. There are some good tips on how to work with gin in cocktails in this article.
  
• Eric Ellestad's Savoy Project and Alembic's Savoy night get coverage in the Wall Street Journal (see also, my story from October)
• All you need to do to become a member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club is do a shot... with a severed toe in it.
  
• In April, Scala's Bistro offers a three-martini prix fixe lunch. Yes, it's a lunch that includes three martinis along with food.

Many thanks to Blair who passes along tidbits.

Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated

There's been a rumor that San Francisco's 209 Gin shut down its operations, but it's not true, says 209's distiller Arne Hillesland. He said he's not sure where the rumor originated, but thought it might be a misunderstanding about an employee who left.

In fact, he says they're distilling this week and shipping 300 cases of the product to London. Since I last checked, they expanded their distribution from just west coast states to many in the midwest and on the east coast, including New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Phew. In this case, no news is good news.

Gin winners

Last night I stopped into Rye's cocktail competition with this month's sponsor Bluecoat Gin. Certainly the most interesting cocktail of the evening was Jonny Raglin from Absinthe's green garlic drink- there's nothing like a cocktail that gives you stink breath. Raglin said it was made to go with food, like a big plate of french fries. French fries and gin? That's my kind of meal.

I later found out that it was a garlic gastrique. And you know what that means, folks: He used the magic ingredient of 2008: Vinegar!

The competition's winners were Joel Baker from Bourbon & Branch in third place, H. Ehrman from Elixir as runner-up, and Carlos Yturria from Grand Puh Bah and other places taking home the first prize. His drink was my favorite of the night also- along with some fresh juices, it had pepper in it and I'm a total sucker for that.

Winning drinks from Rye's competition make it onto their drink menu, so stop in and try one.

SF cocktail history

Plymouth gin is the bartender's favorite brand here in San Francisco. What's nice is that the brand sponsors events to thank them for it. In the winter they offered a lecture on molecular mixology techniques, and earlier this week they flew in David Wondrich to lead a big group on a cocktail history tour of San Francisco. Always the hanger-on, I crashed the party.

We started at the Buena Vista Cafe for an Irish Coffee to get us warmed up. We then each took a flask filled with Sydney Ducks Punch (named after San Francisco's most notorious gang of the Gold Rush era), and headed off to North Beach.

We stopped into Vesuvio for a Negroni and pizza. None of these things have anything to do with San Francisco cocktail history but Vesuvio is a cool old bar. Then we headed to the site of the El Dorado (where the Hilton is on Kearny now), a bar/hotel with a tent ceiling, chandelier, and all-female orchestra. It is reported that Jerry Thomas worked there, though no proof has been found. It was so posh the bartender used a solid gold muddler, which someone suggested that Mr. Mojito recreate and sell online.

Close by at the site of the Transamerica building was the Bank Exchange where the Pisco Punch was invented. We called up pisco historian Guillermo Toro-Lira and yelled "cheers!" while he was on speakerphone.

Next up was the site of the Occidental Hotel at 130 Montgomery, where Jerry Thomas worked his second time living in San Francisco. Then we headed to the Palace Hotel where Cocktail Bill Boothby was the head bartender, and had the Palace Cocktail (gin, orange juice, pineapple syrup, egg white) while hearing about its pre-and post-quake history.

Our last stop for food, jazz, and many more drinks was the House of Shields, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this April. There we learned about the history of the Gibson cocktail, which was created in SF in the late 1890's. It was simply London dry gin and dry vermouth, without the orange bitters and garnish that defined a Martini. A Gibson with an olive was called a St. Francis Cocktail and popularized at the St. Francis Hotel. The Gibson eventually became the Martini, so to distinguish the old drink from the new martini they added a cocktail onion as in the Gibson we know today.

Luckily I wrote that down because on our sixth hour of drinking the details got fuzzy. I continued to stay and hang out with the crew until long after it was reasonable, then spent the next day reflecting quietly on the previous night's adventures.

Genever

Jason Wilson has a nice article on genever in the Washington Post, which explains the difference between jonge, oude, and corenwyn styles.

Some stories

Here are two recent stories I have up on gay.com:

- A survey of American gins

- Vodka myths and mysteries

What do these have to do with gayness, you ask? Nothing! Sometimes you just want to write a story and need a place to stick it.

Genevieve

By me, in today's SF Chronicle:

Fritz Maytag and the team at Anchor Distilling are so far ahead of the curve they must get bored waiting for us to catch up. They've just released Genevieve, a genever-style gin they began developing in 1996, which has been sitting in a tank ever since. Genever is an old type of gin (before the modern London dry style came into being) that was used in some of the earliest published cocktail recipes currently in vogue.

New gins (including Anchor's Junipero) are column-distilled into a neutral spirit then infused with botanicals including juniper berries and redistilled. Genevieve, on the other hand, is first distilled from malted grains in a pot still, similar to whiskey, before being flavored and redistilled in another custom-built pot still. The result is a gin with the added flavor and texture of an unaged whiskey.

The first release was only 700 bottles sold mostly to cocktailian bars and a few liquor stores in order to avoid confusion with Anchor's other gin. They're currently producing more of the product for when the rest of us figure it out.

Reading this now I'm uncomfortable with the phrase, "pot still, similar to whiskey." I actually wrote "whisky," meaning scotch, and it was copy-edited to "whiskey," but this could also be incorrect as blended scotch whisky has column distilled whisky mixed in. Bourbon whiskey is mostly column distilled. On the other hand, the phrase "malted grains" does make it similar to (some) whisk(e)y, and it's certainly what people think of when you say "malted grains".

So I'm just going to declare that phrase as ambiguously incorrect. I'm also going to declare that writing about whisk(e)y is a big pain in the ass.

I've got good booze and bad news...

I was lucky enough to sit down with Fritz Maytag of Anchor Distilling to talk about their new Genevieve genever, and even see the still as they were preparing to distill some more while I was there. (The first batch they made in 1996 (700 bottles) and they've just been sitting around waiting for the market to be ready to release it.) Erik does a nice job of introducing it if you haven't heard about it before. I learned a lot about the product and their research into trying to make it in the old style (and even borrowed some books on the subject from Fritz, unfortunately most of which are in Dutch).

So that's the good news- good for me, anyway. Here's the bad.

Because they don't want to confuse consumers with two kinds of gin, Genevieve will primarily only be available at bars and restaurants. Bummer! I'm going to do my best to pry the information out of them as to where we can find it both in bars and retail and share it with my fellow drink nerds. I'll let you know what I hear.

Update: For liquor stores, it apears only Plumpjack and John Walker have it. For bars, it's listed at the Alembic, Redwood Room, Ame, Grand Pubah, Connecticut Yankee, Bacar, Jardiniere, Boulevard, Harris Steakhouse, La Terrasse, Farallon, Absinthe, Bernardus, Cappuros, Range, T Rex, Bourbon and Branch, Elbo Room, Pacific Catch, and R Bar.

American Gin

Rick Lyke has a short tasting of four American gins from Philadelphia, Oregon, Michigan, and Colorado. I forget how many boutique gins there are in the US these days- lots of them. Off the top of my head I can also think of Spruce, Aviation, 209, Junipero, Sarticious, and I'm sure there are many others. Sounds like a fun idea for a tasting party...

The lines, ever-blurring

Yesterday I went to the Hangar One Vodka/ St. George Spirits distillery in Alameda for a party. I've been to their tasting room before but never back to where the stills are. (The area is only open to the public for the Saturday tour.)

They have what looks to be three itty bitty little stills back there. That seemed a bit small to me for all the vodka they produce, and it turns out not everything that gets bottled there runs through them.

Most smaller gin and vodka distilleries operate like this one: They buy column distilled vodka from a larger manufacturer, work some magic on it in a pot still, and bottle it as their product. In the case of gin, they soak herbs and citrus in purchased vodka and redistill it into gin.

At Hangar One, they take grape wine and distill it into vodka- that's the magic. Then they blend this grape vodka with wheat-based vodka made elsewhere to create their final straight vodka product. The wheat vodka part of the finished goods doesn't go through their still.

For their infused vodkas, they let the fruit (or other flavor) soak in purchased wheat vodka and distill it into really flavorful vodka product, then blend this with more of the plain wheat vodka to bring it down to the desired flavor level of the final product.

So without knowing the specific quantities of each of the liquids involved (and assuming this is a trade secret) the line seems a little blurred as to whether this company and others are making flavored vodka or instead making then blending vodka flavorings. On the other hand, if my definition of making flavored vodka meant that all the vodka has to have flavor in it before being (re)distilled, there probably isn't a single product on the market that would qualify.

I suppose I should state that this is not a comment on the quality of the final products, just me nerding out on the definitions.

So perhaps that's a less romantic picture of how craft distilled products are made, but all the craft is still there, just on a different scale than most of us conjure up naturally. But this may help explain why these tiny distilleries are able to sell products at prices not that much higher than those of all column-distilled brands. And in the case of the ultra-expensive designer vodkas where the price reflects more the millions spent in marketing them than the care in making them, these small batch spirits seem like a real bargain.

Mixing New Orleans cocktails

Thanks to Todd Price on eGullet who pointed out these videos. In them, Chris McMillian of the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans demonstrates how to make some famous local cocktails.



In the Ramos Gin Fizz video he tells us that some people add a couple of drops of vanilla to the drink, and also shows that for egg white drinks such as this one, you should first shake the drink without ice, then add ice and shake it more. Good info here.



In the Sazerac video we learn not just how to make it, but this piece of trivia I hadn't heard before: When absinthe was made illegal, it was also illegal to use the word absinthe on the bottle. Herbsaint, an absinthe substitute, is not coincidentally a near anagram of the word 'absinthe' (just with an extra 'r').

He also has videos up for the Pimm's Cup, Margarita, and the Martini.

Pear Necessity

If you've enjoyed Alberta Straub's "Cocktails on the Fly" videos, make sure to check out the newest one, "Pear Necessity." Hilarious!

Online Gin Tasting

This is great. I wish more people would put expert spirits tastings online because they're really helpful- at least they are to me.

The people at GinTime.com sponsored this gin tasting that's hosted on DrinksBusinessTV.com. A tasting expert leads the audience through tasting eight gins- Beefeater, Blue Coat, Hendricks, Martin Millers, Tanqueray, The London Gin, Plymouth, and Whitley Neill. She does is by drawing a chart with six axes and mapping out a flavor chart with common gin characteristics- juniper, citrus, rooty, spicy, floral, and sweet- as she tastes each brand.

It's really handy in figuring out what to look for when tasting gin in general, and perhaps worth picking up a few of these gins to taste along with her at home. You don't need them all to get good information out of it though.

Nectarini

I decided to make myself an early afternoon cocktail, just because I can. And it turns out I made one that was actually good. Naturally, the photo turned out bad, but here it is anyway.

I had a nectarine that I was going to eat, but then I figured, why not drink it instead? I muddled it up as best I could (it was juicy but didn't produce a whole lot of juice so much as mush), added the juice of half a lime, an ounce and a half or so of gin, and a splash of simple syrup.

The drink is fantastic. Not cloying and sweet, but not too juice+boozy either. Do try this at home.

Unfortunately now I'm out of nectarines and I'm not in the mood for a leftover-Indian-foodtini so I guess I'll get back to work.

Ramost

I recently completed an article for Out Magazine in which I was naming new brunch cocktails that are in vogue or at least should be. When I was pondering what to include, the Ramos Gin Fizz sort of popped onto my radar.

In the next two weeks, the drink came up in conversation randomly or at the mention of brunch six different times. Everywhere I looked I'd see it, sort of like when you learn a new word then start hearing that word all the time used by strangers on the bus. So I decided it needed to be included.

When looking for a recipe for the drink to include, I researched newly-released cocktail books to quote from (this is called a "news hook" in the magazine world). The one that popped out is Southern Cocktails by Denise Gee. But her recipe is definitely not standard. She calls for a full ounce of orange flower water in the drink, whereas most other recipes call for two or three drops. She also only uses lemon juice, as opposed to both lemon and lime. She serves the drink over ice, which some people do but most I've seen don't.

So in the end I went with Dale DeGroff's version from The Craft of the Cocktail. But then in the final version of the story the drink and recipe got cut out! All that work for nothing. Except inspiration- I'm going out brunching at The Alembic this weekend just to get one.

Sample Styles

The New York Times today has a piece on gin tasting, which is unique in that they sampled the gins in martinis rather than straight.

I've always thought that this was a problem with a lot of comparison tastings of spirits- nobody drinks gin or cachaca or pisco or a lot of other spirits on their own. I think the juniper-forward gins that work great in martinis taste far too powerful on their own. As they point out in the Times article, some gins, mostly the newer expressions, though complex and bright and delicious, just don't mix well with vermouth. They singled out 209 Gin and G'Vine as examples that they didn't feel were right in martini form. I completely agree with G'Vine, which is a flower bomb that's really tasty but needs to be tempered with tonic water.

I've also done a vodka sampling at room temperature. Yes, you can taste more nuance at room temperature, and coldness hides impurities, but name a single vodka drink served at room temperature. If the cheap yucky stuff tastes just as good as the expensive fancy stuff when it's served in a cocktail, what does it matter how good it tastes warm?

Anyway, I'm glad to see that someone did a taste test in a real-world environment. Here's to more of that.

Cocktailing with Cameron Bogue, Part Two

So anyway, Cameron Bogue, Smirnoff Cocktail Consultant and I went out drinking in San Francisco. He had a map of all the places he wanted to visit but we didn't get all that far because we stayed too long at every place we did visit.

Slanted Door- We were lucky enough to visit SD on a night when bar manager Erik Adkins was working, as he loves to talk shop and mix up a lot of drinks. (Both times when I spent more than 20 minutes talking with Erik I had more than six drinks in front of me, which seems normal to me but customers started making comments...) We tried a rhum agricole punch topped with grated nutmeg that was just great. I had a Casino, which is an Aviation with added orange bitters. These bitters were the homemade ones that I wrote about in the Chronicle, finally put to good use. They were also experimenting with homemade ginger beer, as Erik went off the menu and whipped us up so many more drinks. Eventually we had to flee as we had dinner reservations.

Absinthe- Absinthe also has a Casino cocktail on their menu, so it turns out that I'm right about the Aviation being the new Negroni. We had a few other drinks with dinner there that were tasty, and I don't remember what they were but they were all terrific.

Bourbon & Branch- It turns out that Cameron knows Todd Smith, and had considered working at B&B when it was going to open. That would have been stupendous. Anyway, we had several drinks and all were tasty. They've been brining their own olives for a while now, but recently made a brine with smoked salt and I think scotch. The smoky olives were fantastic, though I think they could find a better vehicle for them than a gin martini. In other news, Todd says that they're bringing back the Rouge No. 10 when strawberries are in season. Hooray!

Rye- Normally Rye never dissapoints, but the execution of the cocktails we had there this time was off so we went back to B&B for a nightcap that I really didn't need but thought was a good idea at the time.

The next day I was horribly, miserably, shamefully hungover. But I had a text message from Cameron before I'd crawled out of bed as they were headed to LA around 8AM. Yep, the guy is a pro.

Boo No. 10

*updated*

On Sunday I went to Bourbon & Branch with some friends. This was the first time I've been there since they shortened the cocktail menu- though it's still pretty darn long.

I had been talking up the Rouge No. 10- the drink of black pepper-infused gin with muddled strawberries- to my companions, only to find it's no longer on the menu. Bummer!

4/18/07
Guess what I found! Marco posted the recipe for the Rouge No 10. on eGullet! Hooray!

Rouge no. 10
1 3/4 oz. black pepper gin
1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup
2-3 small strawberries (or 1 giant one)
1/2 oz. Pastis
Muddle 2-3 strawberries with simple syrup. Add gin and lime juice and shake vigorously. Rinse chilled cocktail glass with Pastis. Double strain cocktail into prepared glass. Garnish with a strawberry and fresh ground pepper.

(Infuse a bottle of Plymouth with a handful of black peppercorns for no more than 24 hours.)

I stole this recipe from Todd Smith of Bourbon & Branch.
After I added the Pastis he stole it back.
--------------------
Marcovaldo Dionysos

Let's make this official

The Aviation is the new Negroni.

There, I said it. I am an expert so now it's official.

Negroni
1 ounce gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari

Aviation
gin
lemon juice
maraschino liqueur
(Proportions different everywhere you get it.)

Cocktails at Perbacco

Several weeks ago I went for cocktails at the new restaurant Perbacco in downtown SF. The after-work bar scene needs no advertisement from me, as it gets packed nightly around happy hour.

I was meeting a representative from the PR agency for the restaurant, so between the two of us I was able to try four cocktails. They were all pretty tasty.

The Rosemarino is made with vodka, lemon, rosemary simple syrup, apple brandy, and has a big sprig of rosemary in it. It starts off subtle but as the sprig of rosemary infuses into the drink it gets stronger. I'm not a huge rosemary fan so I would have picked out the garnish halfway through like I do with olives.

The Dieci is right up with alley, made with Campari, gin, and grapefruit juice. It's like a negroni with even-more bitter grapefruit swapped in for sweet vermouth. Hell, yeah.

I never used to like grapefruit juice after a bad experience with grapefruit and Southern Comfort in high school (funny how I never gave up the whiskey) but I've had a few drinks lately that use it and I've loved them so I think it's time to stop worrying and love the juice.

We also had a Pearlini, which is a modified Bellini (champagne and peach) instead made with prosecco, pear brandy, fresh pear, and cinnamon. It was really great, and didn't remind me of a fluffy champagne cocktail at all.

The last drink I had (I don't see its name on the menu I have at home) was made with a ton of pomegranate and tasted almost like a thick winter spiced drink. The bartender said it was named after his grandmother. Awww, shucks.

Anyway, this is a bar to add to the list of downtown spots with good cocktail programs, or your other list of restaurants to drink in.

Will today be the best drinking day ever?

My agenda today:

Lunch: Meet the distiller of Plymouth Gin for lunch at Slanted Door

Afternoon: Christmas Ale taste-off with Fritz Maytag and gang at Anchor Brewery

Evening: The Chronicle's Food & Wine holiday party at Michael Bauer's house

I have a feeling this is going to be a good day.

Bitters

Yesterday I went to the 209 Gin distillery on Pier 50 in San Francisco. They invited local bartenders to a make-your-own bitters day a few weeks ago, where they could pick herbs and spices to mix with alcohol and let soak for a couple of weeks. They could follow ancient recipes found in old cocktail books or on the web, or try to invent new ones. Yesterday they went to pick up the finished jar of bitters, strain it out, dilute it with water, add sugar, and bottle it. I heard about the event, so I went to watch.

I met head distiller Arne Hillesland, who gave me a great tour of the facility. They only distill on demand, so unfortunately weren't doing it that day. It's approximately a three-day process because they leave the juniper and other herbs to soak in the gin overnight before they fire up the heater to distill on the next.

I could go into detail about the day, but I'm going to write an article about it so you'll read it in the Chronicle later.

In the meantime, click here to check out my photoset on Flickr from the day.

The Gimlet is the New Martini

Here is my latest article in the SF Chronicle about the gimlet.

Inventive gimlets stray from tradition

Way back in the 1990s, martinis came in only two flavors: vodka or gin. Then someone invented the ultra-popular appletini and unleashed great confusion upon the land. Bars and restaurants scrambled to create their own signature martinis. Entire menus devoted to martinis followed, with ingredients so far removed from the original recipe that some people now use "martini" to mean "anything served in a martini glass."

The drink has come a long way from gin, vermouth and an olive.The traditional gimlet recipe is even simpler. It calls for gin and Rose's Lime Juice, but now it is being served around San Francisco with everything from cucumbers to cardamom.

Read the rest of the story here.