Cocktails
Classic drinks, Scottish bottles
These are the classics, given straight. Where we suggest a Scottish way with one, it is labelled as our suggestion — none of these is a distillery’s official serve, and we haven’t invented a house cocktail to make the page look busier.
Modern classic
Bramble
Wild flavours in a glass.
Dick Bradsell created the Bramble at Fred’s Club in London in the 1980s, reaching for something that tasted of a British hedgerow rather than a beach. It is the single best thing to do with a juniper-forward gin.
5 ingredients RecipeThe essential
Gin & Tonic
The serve that matters most.
Ninety-odd percent of the gin bought in this country is drunk this way, so it is worth doing properly. The three things that actually change the drink are the ratio, the temperature and how much you disturb it.
4 ingredients RecipeClassic
Tom Collins
Long, cold and unhurried.
A gin sour lengthened with soda, and the template for half the long drinks on any menu. It is forgiving, which is why it has lasted.
4 ingredients RecipeClassic
Negroni
Equal parts, no argument.
Gin, Campari and sweet vermouth in equal measure, stirred, over ice, with orange. It is the most gin-forward classic there is, which makes it a good test of a bottle.
4 ingredients RecipeClassic
French 75
For when it is a proper occasion.
Named after a First World War field gun, on the basis that it hits with much the same force. Gin, lemon, sugar and something sparkling.
4 ingredients RecipeClassic
Gimlet
Two ingredients, nowhere to hide.
Gin and lime cordial, cold. There is nothing in it but the gin, so a Gimlet tells you more about a bottle in one sip than a tasting note will in a paragraph.
3 ingredients RecipeA word on measures. Everything here is in millilitres because that is how bar recipes are written and it is the only way ratios survive being scaled. A standard UK single is 25ml, a double 50ml. If you are driving, the Scottish limit is lower than the one in England and Wales — a single cocktail can put you over.