Basil Gimlet

Basil Gimlet - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist
For a number of years this has been one of our favorite summer cocktails, but we just can't resist continuing to tweak it. We've made it with either gin or vodka with good results, but when we tried adding a bit of aquavit we felt that we had arrived at the perfect balance. The fresh basil really comes through when enhanced by the herbal flavor of the aquavit.

The lime juice and muddled basil also give the cocktail a vibrant green color - making it a lovely muse for a watercolor painting.

Because we love Italian food, we always have plenty of sweet basil growing during the summer - usually in pots so that it can be moved around during the course of the growing season. When the weather gets cool we bring it indoors just to extend the taste of summer a bit longer. If you are not growing basil at home you can certainly find it now at the farmer's market. To keep cut basil fresh, trim the stems and put it in a jar or vase (as you would with cut flowers). Cover the leaves loosely with a plastic bag and leave it out on the counter. It should keep for about a week. For more about storing basil see this post from bon appetit.

We have also tried making a basil simple syrup to use in this cocktail (as opposed to muddling the fresh basil). It worked ok, and was much simpler when we had a large group for cocktails (we didn't have to spend so much time muddling, straining, etc.), but the freshness of the basil was muted. We ended up freezing the simple syrup in a silicone ice cube tray so that we can use it in the future, but while we have fresh basil we'll stick with the recipe below.

So mix up a gimlet, put together a nice appetizer plate of cured Italian meats and an Insalata Caprese and enjoy. Cheers!

Basil Gimlet

5 medium sized leaves of fresh basil
1 1/2 ounces gin (or vodka if you prefer)
1/2 ounce aquavit
1 ounce lime juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup

Muddle basil with lime juice in a cocktail shaker. Add gin, aquavit, and simple syrup. Shake well with ice cubes and strain through a mesh strainer into a chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with a small basil leaf.
The Basil Gimlet Cocktail


Watercolor sketch of basil - by the Cocktail Artist


The cocktail and some of the ingredients


Fresh basil from the garden - a bit too much for just cocktails!

The Basil Gimlet and the Blue Garden Cocktail make a nice color palette for summer (see previous blog post for the Blue Garden recipe).



Popular posts from this blog

The Last Call

Image
This post is a week late, but this blog is our hobby (not our real job) so we’re not going to worry about it. Anyhow, we came up with this drink for Mardi Gras as the “last call” before the beginning of Lent – a time when some of us stop drinking for 40 days (we’ll let you know how that works out). The name “Last Call” also references the classic “Last Word” cocktail. The Last Word is really a perfect cocktail. It’s equal parts of four ingredients (gin, Green Chartreuse, Maraschino Liqueur, and lime) and a superb balance of tart, herbal, and sweet. It’s one of our fallback cocktails – one that we mix up when we can’t make up our mind about what we want to drink.  Another classic that we regularly enjoy is the Aviation Cocktail. The Aviation is another gin cocktail and is one of the few that uses Crème de Violette – a sweet, floral liqueur that is typically a deep purple hue. It takes mixing quite a few Aviations to go through a bottle of Crème de Violette, so it’s probably
Read more

Lemon Bergamot Gimlet

Image
In case you don’t know us personally, or haven’t read the bio on our blog , you may not realize the “The Cocktail Artist” is really a partnership between two architects (who also happen to be married to each other). One of us comes up with the recipes, does the photography, and writes the blog posts – the other one creates all of the original artwork and offers opinions on the cocktail recipes. Being architects, we sometimes let our design-sense get the better of us – meaning we have been known to purchase a bottle of booze because we like the design of the bottle.  Occasionally this backfires, but rest assured (with some creative mixology or a bit of barrel-aging) we have always been able to make use of the contents of those impulse-buy bottles. Right now, two of the most attractive bottles in our liquor cabinet contain Italian spirits – Malfy Gin Con Limone and Italicus . Italy has always been a design trendsetter, so it’s not surprising that these bottles stand out (they ev
Read more

Amalfi Martini

Image
Darn! Why didn’t we buy those airline tickets to Italy when they were cheap? It would be so nice to be lounging in a beautiful Italian seaside town right now.  The Amalfi region, on Italy's west coast, is known for it's production of lemon liqueur and fine writing and art paper - sounds like the perfect place for us! Oh well, maybe it would be better to be there during the off season. Italy is probably packed with American tourists right now. Let's  just pull out the watercolor paints and the cocktail shaker and bring a bit of la dolce vita  to our patio. Our Amalfi Martini (naturally) features limoncello. It's a fairly low-alcohol liqueur, so we boost the proof of this cocktail by adding our vodka of choice - District Made Vodka by One Eight Distilling. If you are using a vodka that doesn't have much flavor on it's own (which, honestly, is most vodka) you may want to add a couple dashes of citrus bitters to this recipe. This just wouldn't be an Ita
Read more

Cherry Capital Old Fashioned

Image
Cherry Capital Old Fashioned - original watercolor painting by The Cocktail Artist If you've read some of our previous posts (such as the Up North Raspberry and Rye or the Grand Mariner Cocktail) you know that we're fans of the bourbon and rye produced by The Traverse City Whiskey Co . Traverse City, Michigan is known as the "Cherry Capital" for being the area with the largest production of tart cherries in the United States. In Traverse City, you will find wonderful freshwater beaches, lots of summer tourists, and (of course) cherries! You can attend the Cherry Festival in July, go to the Cherryland Mall, and fly into Cherry Capital airport. So the folks at Traverse City Whiskey (naturally) produce an American Cherry Edition of their bourbon. Here in the Nation's Capital we were lucky enough to find this cherry bourbon at our local liquor store. It's a nice bourbon for sipping neat, but during #OldFashionedOctober we also tried it in an Old Fashioned and
Read more

Douglas Fir Martini

Image
This was one of our very early blog posts. Now that the holiday season is here it seems like a good time to revisit it. Our cocktail recipe remains unchanged, but we wanted to add some information about the ingredients and include a bit more artwork. This martini, with it’s pine forest aroma, is our antidote to holiday stress. Mix up a couple of these to help you through your decorating, gift-wrapping, etc… Doesn’t enjoying a cocktail while you relax in front of the fireplace sound much nicer than struggling to get the Christmas tree in the stand? Along with The Cocktail  Artist's watercolors maybe we can give you the feeling you're walking through a pine forest instead of stressing out over some holiday preparations. At the heart of this cocktail is Clear Creek Distillery’s Douglas Fir Brandy . We discovered this unusual liqueur in our local liquor store a couple of years ago and just couldn’t resist giving it a try. Clear Creek calls it “a tree in a bottle”. It's m
Read more