I think Gin Tonic is austerity and hedonism at the same time. Getting drunk without getting pissed. You can have the cake and eat it all. It is a drink in an age of crisis. It is stabilty, security, without Spießigkeit. You can rely on Gin Tonic. You cannot do much wrong with Gin Tonic. But you also can have a lot of fun with Gin Tonic. You don’t have to think about the consequences, really. You will be fine. That is the message. That is the feeling from the first sip on, actually maybe already from the moment that you order the drink. It arrives, a lot of ice, an indefinite amount of Gin. Some vegetable or not. And the Tonic. Some people will never talk to you again if you drink Schweppes. I am not one of them. But I understand that there are better Tonics. Anyway: You pour the Tonic. You taste the Gin. The drink is always too strong at the beginning and not strong enough at the end, which is odd. Imbalanced balance. Imperfection throughout. And yet total conviction. It is a convincing drink. And it starts always well. The drunkenness builds slowly. First the drink is only refreshing. Then you start to feel it. You talk more, you think faster, you are more daring. But you are still in command. It is a drink about authority. It is a drink for non-drinkers as well as for professional drinkers. Experts love it, as do people who either don’t know anything about liquor or don’t want to know anything or just hate any kind of connoisseurship. Gin Tonic is anti-connoisseurship and in that sense the rebuttal of anything the Nineties were about. Or the 2000s, people much too young sitting in bars and talking about Whiskey. Are you serious? You can bore people for hours talking about Highland and Lowland or Single or Double or whatever. You can talk only for half a minute about Gin. Really. This is quite enough. I am not saying that there isn’t a certain degree of expertise in it which is always fine in a late night setting or early in an evening that might or might not end well. This is after the age of the expert. Everybody knows something. Which can be bothering. Especially if they are not the owner of the bar or the barkeeper. Even they can be a nuisance. So Gin Tonic is a drink without excuses. You cannot hide behind some bullshit. You have to be funny. Or smart. Or sad yourself. You have to be you. There is this clarity in Gin Tonic. It is a drink for talking, not for silence. It is a drink for conversation, even long conversations. You can go on and on drinking Gin Tonic. It is also a smooth drink, a seductive drink, both for men and women, both in the hand of men and women. It is a unisex drink in an unisex age which does not mean that it is not sexual. It is what it is, and also the contrary. A hybrid drink that could be anything you wanted it to be. Only recently you had to start making decisions, Hendrick’s, Tanqueray, Beefeater 24, Blackfriar’s, Bloom, of course our very own Monkey 47. This took some of the ease out of the Gin Tonic. But you can still avoid decisions which can be good in any situation, mood, environment. In the sleeziest place, in the most desperate moment, with the most thrilling or boring people, it can be a good choice not to have to decide. Men in general, I would say, like this drink because they can avoid doing the wrong thing and feel manly at the same time. They don’t have to think too hard. Women on the contrary have a drink that leads them out of the longdrinks ghetto of effeminate nonsense with little paper umbrellas. It gives them the power they already have. Still, you have to take what is yours, again and again. This is Gin Tonic. There is, I would say, a certain emancipatory spirit in it that is rare, in people as in alcohol.