In last week’s Monday Booktails post we talked about the Experimental Cocktail Club written by Olivier Bon, Pierre-Charles Cros, Romée de Goriainoff, and Xavier Padovani, four longtime friends who are also the owners of a number of bars of the same name. Today’s cocktail is from the Experimental Cocktail Club in the Chinatown district of London, the fourth bar that this group opened and their first venture outside of Paris. As I said last week, this is an absolutely gorgeous book about cocktails that is beautifully photographed and laid out, as well as being very well written. To understand the evolution of this particular drink, we have to go back to the idea of a Gin and Tonic. On the surface, your average G&T is made from just these two ingredients, along with a splash or a twist of lime. You will get variations in flavors that depend upon the gin that you use or the quality of your tonic water. You can also add ingredients like herbs, olives, or cucumbers to bump things up a notch and take the every day G&T right out of its comfort zone. No matter what additions you may make, however, the G&T remains a fairly dry drink that does not necessarily appeal to everyone. Enter onto the scene the Gin Buck, which uses ginger ale instead of tonic and introduces sweetness to replace the mouth puckering effect that tonic water can have. If you add lemon juice to a Gin Buck, you end up with a Leap Frog, and lime juice gives you a Dragonfly. In the Experimental Cocktail Club version, they’ve added in the gloriously herbal bitterness of Suze, along with lemon juice, and the tantalizing licorice flavor of Absinthe. The result is fantastic! Each ingredient makes its individual presence known, but they also come together as a unified whole to produce an unforgettable drink. Use the best possible ginger ale you can for this one. Cheers everyone. Happy Monday!

Get Buck in Here

1 oz Liberty gin locally distilled by Palmer Distilling in Manayunk, Pa.
1 oz Suze
2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
6 dashes of Pernod Absinthe
Fever Tree ginger ale to top

Place all the ingredients except the ginger ale in a shaker tin and add ice. Shake vigorously until very cold and strain into a highball or tall Collins glass over fresh ice. Garnish with a long lemon rind. Enjoy!