What is a gin basil smash?

A gin basil smash is a shaken cocktail of gin, fresh basil, lemon juice and sugar syrup, finely strained into a glass with ice. Four ingredients, nothing else.

The method is in the name. The basil goes first into the bottom of the shaker and is muddled there, before the gin, the lemon juice and the syrup are added. Difford’s Guide leaves the stems on the leaves and counts twelve leaves per glass.

The drink arrives green in the glass. Jörg Meyer, who devised the cocktail, advises muddling the basil rather than shaking it along, because in his view that produces a greener drink (Difford’s Guide).

Jörg Meyer came up with the cocktail in 2008 in his bar Le Lion in Hamburg and first sold it under the name Gin Pesto. Difford’s Guide notes the summer of 2008; Punch writes that the first version was served in the spring of 2008.

Meyer himself takes 10 July 2008 as the birthday: on that day he wrote about the cocktail on the Bitters Blog, and that was when the name Gin Basil Smash first appeared above it (Punch). In the oldest version he muddled half a lemon; he later replaced it with a measured ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Punch reports that Le Lion has sold 300 to 500 of them per week since its introduction, about 22,000 per year, and that the cocktail is on the menu in bars all over Germany. A bartender who had had enough of all that muddling called it “Meyer’s curse”.

For a gin basil smash you need four things: gin, fresh basil, freshly squeezed lemon juice and sugar syrup. Dried basil appears in none of the professional recipes.

The proportions differ slightly per source. Difford’s Guide uses twelve fresh basil leaves, 2 fl oz gin, 3/4 fl oz lemon juice and 1/3 fl oz rich sugar syrup, where rich syrup is two parts sugar to one part water. Punch and VinePair use 2 fl oz gin, 1 fl oz lemon juice and 3/4 fl oz regular sugar syrup.

On the amount of gin, Meyer is outspoken in Difford’s Guide: “5 cl Gin is not enough; 6 cl Gin is the recipe; 7 cl Gin is LOVE!” On the basil he writes: “Better too much than not enough basil in this drink.”

Muddle the basil in the shaker, add gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup, shake with ice and fine-strain the drink into the glass. That is the whole preparation.

Fine straining, also known as double straining, means that besides the strainer of the shaker you use a second, fine-mesh strainer. The bruised leaves and the ice splinters stay behind in it, so that only liquid ends up in the glass. Punch prescribes double straining, Difford’s Guide calls it fine straining; it is the same action.

For the glass there are two common choices. Difford’s Guide chills an old-fashioned glass beforehand and pours into it without ice. Punch and VinePair pour into a tumbler filled with ice. In both cases the garnish is a bunch of fresh basil tops.

VinePair recommends citrus-forward gins and writes that juniper-rich gins overpower the taste of the basil. As examples of that citrus direction VinePair names Tanqueray No. 10 and Bombay Sapphire.

The professional recipes point in different directions. Difford’s Guide adds Hayman’s London Dry Gin. Meyer himself, according to Punch, started with G’Vine, then tried Beefeater and Tanqueray, and ultimately arrived at Rutte Celery Gin. A classic London dry and a gin with a spicy twist therefore both work, as long as the juniper does not push out the basil.

When choosing, also pay attention to the alcohol percentage. Gin, distilled gin and London gin must, under Regulation (EU) 2019/787, Annex I, be at least 37.5 percent by volume. In a shaken cocktail with lemon juice and syrup, more of a stronger gin holds up than of a gin that sits just above that minimum.

Replace the gin with an alcohol-free alternative and keep the basil, the lemon juice and the sugar syrup the same. The technique of muddling, shaking and fine straining does not change.

Punch shows the same structure for an alcohol-free sour: 2 fl oz of an alcohol-free base, 1 fl oz lemon juice and 3/4 fl oz sugar syrup, first shaken without ice and then with ice, and then double-strained. The recipe comes from John Dillon, bar manager at Barbuto in New York. Punch adds that the bite and full mouthfeel of a cocktail are hard to replicate; Dillon adds egg white for texture and a sharp tincture to approximate the bite of alcohol.

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