With an aching thirst and a head full of ingenious recipes, Peter Dean is paired up with Chiltern Firehouse’s bartender Dean Shurry to create the ‘ultimate’ G&T
As the ‘smoke’ from the liquid nitrogen swirls around the collins glass, pumping fragrant notes of Indian spices into my face, I take a deep suck on the straw to taste the world’s ultimate G&T.
This recipe will change the face of G&T as we know it and make the two of us world famous.
I desperately want to like it but, to put it simply, it’s actually not very nice. The drink has a heavy, chocolatey middle core, and an overbearing taste of… sherry.
Dean Shurry, bartender from Chiltern Firehouse, looks crestfallen. The guy’s put some serious work into this recipe, and despite his desire he also has to admit that it doesn’t quite work.
We are in a creative workshop, hosted by Bombay Sapphire, in which six of the country’s most innovative bartenders are paired with drinks editors to each create three artistic expressions of the G&T serve. We have to use the sponsor’s gin and literally anything else we can find. From the three serves we have to settle on one and that recipe will then go on sale – first at Bombay Sapphire HQ and then at Chiltern Firehouse for six months.
I arrive with my ‘radical’ notions of slices of fresh ginger and grapefruit peel. Shurry has done considerably more homework (the swot!) and arrives with homemade tonic water, a pestle and mortar full of cardamon, star anise and other Eastern spices, a box of liquid nitrogen and some truly innovate thinking.
Which is why he’s a mixologist and I’m not.
Shurry has gone back to the Indian origins of the G&T when malaria-addled soldiers of the British East India Company first mixed gin, lime, sugar and quinine together. Exploring India on his motorbike, which Shurry did as a younger man, has clearly helped his reference points. As has (presumably) fitting the sponsor’s name into the proceedings.
All three serves will therefore have an Indian influence.
Shurry starts by making his own ‘real’ Indian tonic water using cardamon, vanilla, jasmine flowers, star anise and real quinine. It’s sensational and mixed with gin it certainly tastes like a real G&T, although it has wonderful spicy notes that match the gin’s flavour profile. So far so good.
There is absolutely no branding in this photo – Dean Shurry and his ‘Bombay air’
The other Indian influence is ‘Bombay air’ – a copper pot that contains freshly ground Indian spices and liquid nitrogen so that as the drink arrives at the table, the ‘smoke’ creates some ‘Chiltern Firehouse theatre’ and inviting wafts of the delights to come.
“I just know that as soon as I serve one of these, everyone in the bar will want one,” Shurry says.
The other influences Shurry wants to get into his recipes are Mediterranean ones – connecting with G&T’s popularity in Spain and also the holiday feel, when we start pouring the stuff mid-morning around the pool. Sherry’s favourite serve is Serve #3 because of the Hispanic influence and his belief in sherry and tonic mixing so well together.
So here are Shurry’s serves.
Serve #1. The Simple Serve
Bombay Sapphire; Shurry’s homemade ‘real’ Indian tonic water; ‘Bombay air’
Serve #2. The Mediterranean
Bombay Sapphire; sherbet made from lime, orange & rosemary cured in salt and sherry vinegar; Shurry’s homemade ‘real’ Indian tonic water
To serve – a sprig of rosemary and orange zest, amuse bouche with cured fish, olive and sweet pepper (Shurry liked my idea of the fish being Bombay duck, as did the client, natch)
Serve #3. Barrel-aged fermented G&T
Bombay Sapphire aged in Manzanilla casks; Shurry’s homemade ‘real’ Indian tonic water; ‘Bombay air’
“How about adding some ice to the drink Dean?” I add helpfully
Each one of Shurry’s serves had something going for it, the ‘real’ Indian tonic water and the ‘Bombay air’ in particular. Try as he did to get Serve#3 to work, though, his method of putting two litres of gin in a 48 litre Manzanilla barrel for 48 hours to barrel-age it just didn’t work. Great idea but back to the drawing board.
Ironically, it was the Simple Serve that shone through, which says a lot about why G&T is so popular in the first place.
And also, interestingly, tasting a straight G&T after the artistic serves felt a trifle thin and uninteresting. Thankfully that sensation didn’t last long at all.
You can try Dean Shurry’s ‘ultimate G&T’ at Chiltern Firehouse from July 11 until January 11, 2017.
So how would you make the ultimate G&T? Put your suggestions in the Comments box below and we won’t mediate your recipes. Except for the really stupid ones.
The six mixologists (l-r): Andy Mill from Cocktail Trading Company, George Simmons from Heddon Street Kitchen, Dave Meames from Gilbert Scott, Marcis Dzelzainis from Saeger and Wilde, Constanca Codeiro from Peg and Patriot, Dean Shurry from Chiltern Firehouse
