5 Herbaceous Gin Cocktails for Spring

No, of course you don’t have to put away your peat-smoked Scotch just because it’s spring.

But if you secretly want to, I will point out that in the season of early herbs and flowers there are many ways to take advantage of botanical-forward cocktails and lighten up. Almost all booze begins life as a plant, but by the time you’ve become, say, vodka, there’s not much left of your roots as a thing with… you know, roots.

On the other hand, there are spirits that are all about the herbs, notably gin, which has to contain over half a dozen specific ones to qualify as gin and might have many, many more. Absinthe owes its freaky-deaky je ne sais quoi to wormwood, a bitter and slightly brain-bending member of the Artemesia family. Other famous herby bevvies include Chartreuse, which if my data is correct contains 130 different herbs, including lemon verbena, angelica and sage; St Germain (Elderflowers); Crème de Violette (sweet violets); Pernod (anise); and Bendictine, a brandy with 27 herbal inputs, some of them secret (known ones include fir cones, myrrh, mace and arnica). And that’s for starters. The world of herb-infused spirits is nearly endless, and that’s before you start getting into the explosive growth of craft bitters and the wild world of forage-ables you can use to muddle, garnish or otherwise embellish a cocktail.

So, clearly, we could be here for a while. I’ll spare you the 27-volume encyclopedia of herbaceous drinkiepoos and rattle off a few to get you wondering if it’s 5:00 yet. (PS: yes, yes it is.)

From The Martini Club in Toronto, Canada, here are a couple of gin-lover’s concoctions. These are made with British gin in mind (in homage to a certain upcoming Windsor family milestone, I believe), but if your allegiance is to another gin, you always have my permission to substitute.

The Windsor Knot

windsor knot.jpeg

Ingredients
1.5 oz. Bloom gin
.5 oz. orange liqueur
1 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 oz. white cranberry juice
3 cucumber slices
3 oz. club soda
Cucumber slice, for garnish

Directions: Fill a wine goblet with ice. Add gin, orange liqueur, lemon juice, cranberry juice and cucumber slices. Stir to mix. Top with club soda. Garnish with a cucumber slice.