8! Botanicals – Gin and Tonic Cocktail Kit

TASTING NOTES FROM THE CURATOR

For your cocktail delight and education, 8! Botanicals presents eight natural flavorings and a companion recipe booklet to upgrade your G&T experience.

• Juniper—gin wouldn’t be gin without it, and an extra helping from this kit brings the liquor’s resinous, near-floral notes to the forefront.
• Star anise adds gentle, licorice-like sweet notes in your drink.
• Cinnamon bark tumbles you from sweet to spiced notes and brings out the darker berry notes in gin
• Cloves—just a few at a time—take you the extra mile to balance out the remaining mellowness.
• Coriander seeds lift up your evening concoction with a little citrus hit.
• Green cardamom, that prince of spices, cools heated flavors down. Gin’s no chai tea, but you’ll feel the same sort of refreshment.
• Pink peppercorn’s piney notes play well with juniper—and bring a light berry sweetness into the mix.
• Dried chili peppers take you into a bold final act. Slide one or two of them into your glass for a beautifully smokey afterburn.

PREPARATION

Herbs and spices are well-loved friends in the kitchen, but at the bar, they’re gemstones we’ve only just begun to discover. Gin and tonic’s a classic cocktail: bright, zesty, and refreshing at any time of day, it welcomes the addition of herb and spice flavor notes with open arms. Our local ARC Archipelago Botanical Gin is brimming with potent botanicals of its own, a showcase of citric, fruity notes from all over the Philippines. We splash in Fentimans Naturally Light Tonic Water—this variant has its own light juniper notes—to make our gin and tonics. With the flavors bursting out of the 8! Botanicals kit, your nightly G&T becomes an entirely fresh experience every time.

FOR THE HEALTH OF AN EMPIRE

“The gin and tonic drink has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all the doctors in the Empire.” This ringing endorsement came from Winston Churchill himself. British colonizers on the Indian subcontinent used the bark of the South American cinchona tree—a discovery by the Spanish in what is now Peru—as a treatment and preventative for malaria. Unfortunately, quinine, the active ingredient in this bark, is very bitter and they had to dilute it in sugar water to make it palatable. Thus, “tonic water” was born. When the new health drink became commercialized and was marketed to British expats in India, it was only natural that they mixed it with gin to refresh themselves in the humid tropical climes.

Storage Instructions

Store in a cool dry place.