Pink Gin

Pink Gin

Type	Cocktail
Primary alcohol by volume	Gin
Served	Straight up; without ice
Standard garnish	lemon
Standard drinkware	Cocktail glass
Commonly used ingredients	One part Plymouth gin Dash of Angostura Bitters
Preparation	Chill the glass, then coat the inside with the Bitters. Add the gin very well chilled, garnish and serve.
Notes	The traditional garnish is a shave of lemon rind. You can obtain this by removing about an inch strip of lemon rind with a potato peeler.

Pink Gin is a cocktail made fashionable in England in the mid-19th century, consisting of Plymouth gin^[1] and a dash of Angostura bitters, a dark red bitters that makes the whole drink pinkish. Lemon rind is also commonly used as a garnish, with the citrus oils subtly complementing the flavour.

Origins

Pink gin is widely thought to have been created by members of the Royal Navy. Plymouth gin is a 'sweet' gin, as opposed to London gin which is 'dry', and was added to Angostura bitters to make the consumption of Angostura bitters more enjoyable^[2] as they were used as a treatment for sea sickness in 1824 by Dr. Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert.^[3]

The British Royal Navy then brought the idea for the drink to bars in England,^[4] where this method of serving was first noted on the mainland. By the 1870s, gin was becoming increasingly popular and many of the finer establishments in England were serving Pink Gin.^[5]

Variations

A typical pink gin is one part gin and one dash of angostura bitters.

Though there are no major variations of pink gin, many bartenders vary the amount of angostura bitters used. Typically the drink is topped up with iced water, rarely without water.

A bartender may ask the customer whether he wants it "in or out", upon which the bartender swirls the angostura bitters around the glass before either leaving it in, or pouring it out (leaving only a residue), and then adding the gin.

It is also common for pink gin to be served as 'pink gin and tonic', typically consisting of 4 dashes of angostura bitters and 2 shots of gin, which is then topped up with tonic water. This is served in a highball glass over ice, and then can be garnished with lemon.^[6]

Cedric Charles Dickens (great-grandson of Charles Dickens) records in Drinking With Dickens that a 'Burnt Pink Gin' consists of 1 tsp Angostura burnt by heating over a flame and then poured into "a large tot dry gin".^[7]

In popular culture

• Cathy Wilson (Deborah Kerr) asks her husband (Robert Donat) to get her a pink gin in the pub in the 1945 movie Perfect Strangers.
• In the 1953 film adaptation of Nicholas Monsarrat's book, The Cruel Sea, Lockhart (Donald Sinden) meets Ericson (Jack Hawkins) at a London hotel where they both drink pink gin. In a somewhat rewritten scene in the BBC Radio 4 Extra adaptation of 2013, the pair drink gin and tonic.
• Pink gin was drunk by Hattie (Jean Simmons) in The Grass Is Greener (1960). She liked her bitters to be burnt with a match prior to adding the gin.
• Lottie Cassell offers a pink gin to Logan Mountstuart in Episode 1 of the Channel 4 TV series Any Human Heart. 2010 (UK), 2011 (US).
• Bigelow (Alec Guinness) orders "Two pink gins, full measure and don't skimp on the Angostura" in the movie Raise the Titanic.
• Pink gin is a popular drink in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter.
• In the James Bond novel The Man With the Golden Gun, Bond orders a pink gin with Beefeater and "plenty of bitters" in the bar of the Thunderbird Hotel in Jamaica, which is operated by his nemesis Francisco Scaramanga.
• In Agatha Christie's Poirot, episode Triangle at Rhodes, some of the characters drink pink gin, one such cocktail being used as the delivery method of a deadly poison.
• Pink gin is the drink of choice of Jerry Westerby in the John LeCarre novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
• The drink is repeatedly ordered in Patrick Hamilton's novel The Slaves of Solitude.^[8]
• In the Nevil Shute novel, On the Beach, several of the main characters drink pink gin.
• Pink gin is ordered by David Tomlinson in "Up The Creek" (1958).
• Pink gin was often consumed by Mr. Glodstone in Tom Sharpe's novel Vintage Stuff.
• Pink gin is mentioned in the song "Alcohol" by The Kinks off their album Muswell Hillbillies in which Ray Davies sings "Barley wine, pink gin, he'll drink anything, port, pernod or tequila"^[9]

See also

• Bitters
• Gin
• List of cocktails

References