As a big fan of gin and tonic, the gin basil smash quickly became one of my favourite cocktails after drinking it the first time at a Dominik Eulberg concert in Basel (I think in 2013, but I don’t remember all the details).
For my tests I used the standard ratios of
2cl lemon juice,
2cl sugar syrup,
6cl gin,
10-15 basil leaves.
Muddle the basil leaves with lemon juice and sugar syrup, add gin and ice, shake and pour through a sieve.
The sugar syrup I generally use has 70g sugar/100 ml water, the lemon juice is 100% lemon juice from a bottle (because I am too lazy to make it fresh all the time). As ice cubes I prefer a single, big ice cube for the shaking and in the glass, which melts quite slow compared to smaller ice cubes so the drink doesn’t get watered.
So, first things first, the gin to use for the basil smash. From the gins I tested, Gin Mare turned out to be my favourite for the basil smash. The main reason therefore is, because I think the basil taste is most pronounce, which may or may be related to basil being one of the ingredients. On the downside, the gin taste is not very pronounced. For a more pronounced gin taste, which goes well will the basil I would recommend the Monkey 47. But maybe that’s just because it is one of my favourite gins in general. For more a lower budget version I prefer Roku Gin over Bombay Sapphire (which of course also works), because I think the Roku Gin has less of an alcoholic taste.
After trying some different gins for the basil smash, I went to the other main ingredient: the basil.
Commonly, basil Genovese (aka basil) is used for the basil smash. However, there are several more types of basil, which give more variety to the cocktail and, in my opinion significantly improve it. Since I could not find any option of buying fresh basil other than Genovese basil, I decided to grow it on my own (250 seeds of 5 different basil type each cost around 10 €, one plant covers 2-3 cocktails). The types of basil I tested so far are
Genovese
Vanilla
Cinnamon
Lemon
Red basil
The Genovese I guess everyone knows, but even though you can buy it easily, I can still suggest to cultivate it, because I think the “home-grown” version has a more intense taste. But now to the other types of basil.
With the vanilla basil I was a bit disappointed, because I did not really taste any vanilla an it was quite similar to the Genovese. But still a nice cocktail and maybe taking basil is required (which I will test as soon as I have enough Vanilla basil).
The Cinnamon basil I found to give a bit more “spice” to the cocktail, although the difference I would say is quite subtle and it mostly smells a bit different.
So far my favourite basil is Lemon Basil, as it gives a distinct lemon aftertaste to the cocktail, which I think is significantly better compared to the standard Genovese Basil.
Finally, the Red Basil does not differ in taste from the Genovese, but gives a really nice colour to the cocktail. Unfortunately, my red basil was growing really slow compared to the other types.
To sum it up, for the looks take Red Basil and taste wise my favourite is Lemon Basil with Gin Mare.
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