G & T with lemon

FARB (Famous Author Rob 'Buy My Books Dammit' Byrnes recently inspired me to ramble on about lemons and limes as a result of my reading his Confessions of a Former Pop Drinker. My point is simply this, and it can't be repeated too often in the hope that it will eventually sink in: gin and tonic should be served with a slice of lemon, never with a slice of lime. An abundance of London gin (which is the usual kind that people drink) should be poured over ice. Fizzy tonic water should be added (to a certain extent, but you don't want to drown the gin), followed by the squeeze of a lemon. Delicious.

Which gin to use? Boodles or Malacca if available, which is rarely. Beefeater is exceptionally drinkable, and Bombay Sapphire is fabulous and mixes very well. Never drink Tanqueray unless it happen to be Tanqueray Malacca. For tonic I prefer Schweppes in a little bottle. Those soda-pop guns that are used in bars get contaminated by such other fluids as soda water, so you never can be sure what's mixing with your tonic and your gin, but as soon as you taste the drink, you'll know that it's got a little something else. For those cocktail emergencies that occur, it is acceptable to serve Gordon's with a generic tonic.

If you've only ever tasted 'g & t' with lime, you haven't tasted it at all! I've poured enough of it down my own throat that I know the good of it (to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw).