If you’d really love to make some delicious gin cocktails but also don’t want much of the fuss, our 10 gin cocktail recipes have a maximum of five ingredients that you can easily blend to impress your friends. We recommend using Tanqueray London Dry gin with its four base botanicals of juniper, coriander, angelica root and liquorice, blended with bittersweet Seville oranges and orange blossom flavours, or Tanqueray 0.0% Alcohol free for an even lighter cocktail with all the famous botanicals still intact.
You could also be adventurous and try the French Gin G'vine Floraison with botanicals of Cardamom, Cassia, Coriander, Cubeb Pepper, Ginger, Grape Flowers, Juniper, Licorice, Lime, Nutmeg or Citadelle original Dry Gin.
These 10 easy gin cocktails are a mix of classic cocktails and contemporary twists with a dash of fizz or fruitiness depending on your taste.
Find out how to make two important cordials that add an essentially fruity or sweet note to your cocktails. You’ll find them at the end of this article.
Let’s start off with your own elderflower flavoured gin using Tanqueray as the base, which you can use in any of your cocktails.
Elderflower gin
I know we said a maximum of 5 ingredients but this deliciously sweet, floral infused gin is still easy to make and well worth the bit of extra effort.
Ingredients
Thyme Sprig to garnish.
1
Shake the elderflower heads to get rid of any insects then rinse and dry carefully. Place In a large jug and add the lemon peel, caster sugar. Pour over the gin then cover and leave to infuse for 24hrs.
2
Strain through coffee filter paper or 2 sheets of kitchen paper into a clean bottle. It keeps for up to 1 month but you can keep it for much longer by adding more gin and sugar. Serve with tonic water and plenty of ice..
And now to our easy gin cocktails that will delight your friends.
Our 10 most delicious home-made gin cocktails
1.Elderflower Collins
The elderflower Collins cocktail is a really simple gin cocktail and riff on the classic Tom Collins . You can use Toschi Fiori di Sambuco syrup or Monin Elderflower syrup, both delicately floral but there is nothing quite like your own elderflower cordial and it’s not hard to make.
Ingredients
Herb sprigs, to garnish.
Shake the gin, lemon juice, sugar and a dash of elderflower cordial in a cocktail shaker. Pour over ice and top up with soda water. Garnish with a sprig of herb and lemon slices to garnish.
2.Dry Martini
A favourite of our screen double agent James Bond, either Vesper or Dry, it is the natural progression of the Martinez cocktail from the American gold rush in 1850. It saw Vermouth and gin mixed together.
Ingredients
Fill a tumbler or martini glass with ice, pour in the Vermouth and gin, then stir gently. Add a lemon twist or 1 or 3 olives, to garnish.
3.Gimlet
As drunk by the famous detective Philip Marlowe, the original citrus forward Gimlet cocktail is listed in The Savoy Cocktail Book of 1930.
Ingredients
Fill a shaker with ice, pour the gin and lime cordial and shake for 12 seconds. Throw the ice out of the glass and filter the Gimlet through the sieve into the glass.
Garnish with a lime wedge and serve. The Richmond Gimlet adds a mint leaf before shaking.
4.Gin Rickey
- Scott Fitzgerald’s favourite tipple, the mid-1880s saw bartender George A. Williamson allegedly create the rickey at Shoomaker's on E Street NW, Pennsylvania Avenue.
Ingredients
Pour the gin and lime juice into the glass and top with sparkling water, add lime and
garnish with a lime wheel or wedge.
5.Southside Gin Cocktail
Allegedly Al Capone’s favourite drink, it was either named after the South Side district of Chicago, Illinois, or from the Southside Sportsmen's Club on Long Island.
Ingredients:
Shake the gin, lime juice, sugar syrup and the mint then strain into a chilled tumbler and garnish with mint leaves.
6.Tom Collins
In 1862 Jerry Thomas published The Bar-Tender’s Guide, an authentic bible of good drinking and the reissue of 1876 contains the first official recipe of Tom Collins. Sharp and summery, this American classic Tom Collins is full of tangy citrus.
Ingredients
Shake together until chilled, then serve on the rocks.
7.Gin Sour
Officially popping up around the 1880s, it had probably been in existence since around the 1500s for medicinal purposes.
Ingredients
10 ml egg white (optional)
Maraschino cherry or lemon slice, for garnish
Shake the gin, fresh lemon juice, egg white and sugar syrup without ice cubes for at least 15 seconds, (a "dry shake" ) to create a froth. Add ice cubes to the cocktail shaker and shake well again until chilled. Strain over ice.
Garnish with a maraschino cherry and a slice of lemon.
8.Gin Fizz
Concocted by Henry C. Ramos in 1888 at his bar in the Meyer's Table D'Hotel Internationale in New Orleans.
Ingredients
Maraschino cherry or lemon slice, to garnish
Shake the gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup with plenty of ice. Strain into a tumbler and top up with sparkling water. Garnish with a lemon slice and maraschino cherry.
9.White Lady Cocktail
In 1919 at Ciro's Club in London, Harry MacElhone invented the White Lady and in 1929, he swapped the Crème de Menthe for gin at Harry's New York Bar in Paris, however the the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel doesn’t agree as it claims Harry Craddock invented it there.
Ingredients
Egg white (optional)
Shake all the ingredients with ice then shake without ice. Add lemon zest.
10.Bramble cocktail
This delicious blackberry drink was invented by Dick Bradsell in 1980s London.
Ingredients
50ml Tanqueray London Dry gin
25 ml lemon juice
12.5ml sugar syrup
12.5ml Monin Blackberry Syrup
Blackberries to serve.
Shake the gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup with ice and strain into a glass filled with crushed ice. Drizzle the Monin Blackberry Syrup over the ice so that it bleeds through. Serve with a lemon wedge and blackberries.
If you are already exhausted just reading about how to make these cocktails, why not try our 6 premium premixed gin cocktails ready to tear, pour over ice and sip without bothering with bottles or shaking.
How to make your own elderflower cordial
Ingredients
- 2 ½kg white sugar, either granulated or caster
- 2 unwaxed lemons
- 20 fresh elderflower heads, stalks trimmed
- 85g citric acid (from chemists)
- Lemon: Juice and slices to decorate
1
Gently heat sugar and 1.5 litres of water in a large saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Stir intermittently. Zest the lemons with a peeler, then slice lemons into rounds.
2
Bring the pan of syrup to the boil, turn off the heat. Wash the flower heads gently and shake. Add them to the syrup along with the lemons, zest and citric acid, then stir. Leave the mixture to infuse for 24 hrs.
3
Ladle the syrup into a lined colander then place it over a large bowl or pan and let it drip slowly through. With a funnel and ladle, fill sterilised bottles. Rinse, then leave to dry in a low oven.
How to make your own lime cordial
If you don’t want to make this from scratch like the elderflower cordial, you can cheat a bit with pre-made sugar syrup.
Ingredients
300 g of sugar syrup
300 g of lime juice,
Lime peel.
Mix them all together. You can keep the cordial for a week or longer, use double the sugar syrup before flavouring with the skins then add more lime juice to taste before serving.
Gin cocktails in the box
Looking for cocktails delivered straight to your door? Try our gift box collections:
Timeless Classics Box