Gin Daisy

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Cocktail History

The Gin Daisy is a light and airy gin cocktail that was created in the 1870s. The Daisy blueprint is a quintessential example of one of the six basic cocktail recipes because it’s made up of a base spirit, citrus, and a liqueur. The Essential Cocktail Book: A Complete Guide to Modern Drinks, which is where we first found this recipe, takes the formula a step further to suggest a new school variation of the drink that swaps out the classic triple sec for grenadine and simple syrup. We decided against that and instead made ours the old-fashioned way.

Cocktail Ingredients

To make this cocktail, you’ll need the following ingredients:

Gin: This is the base spirit. We went with Dancing Door Distillery’s Death’s Door Gin for its simple botanical flavors of juniper berries, fennel seeds, and coriander.

Triple Sec: This adds sweet citrus flavors that balance out the other dry ingredients. We went with Cointreau because it’s one of the highest quality triple secs on the market.

Lemon Juice: This adds sour citrus flavors for balance. We prefer to use fresh citrus juice because it’s less bitter than the bottled stuff and tastes much better.

Soda Water: This is water that has been infused with carbon dioxide gas under pressure. It stretches the drink and adds some fizz. We used Topo Chico because it’s light, essentially flavorless, and refreshing.

Lemon Wedge: This is the garnish. It adds fresh lemon aroma and flavor.

Tasting Notes

The Gin Daisy starts out with a light lemony herbal aroma, has the crisp and clean taste of the gin and citrus right away, and finishes off with the orange taste of the liqueur coming forward.

Our Opinion of This Cocktail Recipe: This variation was also stretched out with soda water to make it a bit more refreshing and help you take it a little slower. That combined with its natural herbal dryness made it a phenomenal drink for a hot day when you want to stay away from anything that has a cloying sweetness.

Recipe

This cocktail recipe was adapted from The Essential Cocktail Book: The Complete Guide to Modern Drinks by the editors of PUNCH and Megan Krigbaum.

Tools & Glassware We Recommend

More Gin Cocktails

If you like this gin-based cocktail recipe, here are a few others we’ve tried that you may enjoy:

• Gin Rickey: A classic gin cocktail made with lime juice, club soda, and a lime wheel

• Lemon Thyme Gin & Tonic: A lemon gin cocktail made with lemon juice, thyme syrup, Indian tonic water, and a lemon wedge

• Florodora: A gin cocktail made with lime juice, raspberry syrup, simple syrup, ginger ale, a lime slice, and raspberries

• Trellis Gin & Tonic: An ombré gin cocktail made with cucumber and rose pink tonic water, lime juice, and a rolled cucumber