Tonic Wars: Who's winning and who's not...

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What's your favorite tonic?

Canada Dry
1
100%
Fentiman's
0
No votes
Seagram's
0
No votes
Stirring's
0
No votes
Whole Foods
0
No votes
Fever Tree
0
No votes
Q-Tonic
0
No votes
Vintage
0
No votes
White Rock
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 1

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Capn Jimbo
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Tonic Wars: Who's winning and who's not...

Post by Capn Jimbo »

Batman and Robin, Black and White, Gin and Tonic...


The tonic wars have been going on, but the biggies: Canada Dry, Schweppe's and Seagram's practically sell tankers for each six-pack of the so-called competitors. These tiny competitors all claim they've taken the time, trouble and extra special components to make a tonic so fackin special that you should trash your beloved tonic for their fantastic new product.

Are these new tonics really better? Like the gin that goes with them, many of these new tonics add new ingredients with which they hope to distinguish themselves. All of them claim to make a better G&T, and all claim to be worth their premium prices.

Should you spend the money?


No, and here's why...


To end the tonic wars and debate, Maggie Hoffman of Serious Eats finally did what needed to be done: a real test, ie a blind tasting test of the 10 most well known tonics, including both the big standards and new kidz on the block, using Tanqueray for the gin. The criteria was based on these factors: "Tonic should be bitter—even a little aggressive... But the bitterness should be balanced by delicate sweetness. With the addition of citrusy and herbal notes, tonic should be complex and refreshing, with fine, lively carbonation."

The results with a top score of 10:

1. Canada Dry: 7.6/10
2. Fentiman's: 6.2
3. Seagram's: 6.0
4. Stirring's: 5.2
5. Whole Foods: 5.0
6. Schweppe's: 5.0
7. Fever Tree: 4.6
8. Q-Tonic: 4.5
9. Vintage: 4.5
10. White Rock: 4.2

I won't bother you with the specifics, see the link below. But a couple of conclusions. First that there appears to be a very clear leader, by far - good old Canada Dry. Why? "It seemed balanced, with enough bitterness and a punch of citric flavor to offset the sweetness ... refreshing, sweet up front, with smooth bitterness on the finish". With gin "Tasters noted that this tonic picked up the floral and junipery notes of the gin really well. 'It's not kidding around.. aggressive in a way that I like."

The rest were bunched around the middle with a group of real losers near the bottom. For reasons which will become apparent, I'm gonna speak to the heavily hyped Q-Tonic, just 0.3 from dead last. And why again? Almost all the tasters "... found it a little metallic and found the bracing bitterness overwhelming". With gin the tasters found just about "...standard...Nothing exciting or especially delicious".
http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/04/t ... grams.html

A confirmation...

Another taste test was conducted by the huge Huffington post, who taste tested a number of good gins with Canada Dry, Fever Tree and Q-Tonic. This extended test again confirmed Canada Dry as the best tonic - by far - and Q-Tonic as the worst. They did a wrinkle though: they found that the better gins (like Beefeater or Plymouth) did best with the ubiquitous CD, while the cheapest and most uninteresting gins (like Gordon's) benefited from the added flavors of the more expensive tonics, especially Fever Tree.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/2 ... 21888.html

Overall though, the best tonic is Canada Dry by a landslide...
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Capn Jimbo
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Post by Capn Jimbo »

Speaking of tonic wars...


...I'm forced to relate the story of our frozen friend and his blundering attempt at a "Gin and Tonic Challenge". Such a "competition" really is challenging, what with the many gins - all using different recipes, and likewise a goodly number of tonics, again all different. Thus a fair competition would have to examine each gin against each tonic, eg if there were 40 gins (at least) and 10 tonics (at least) this would require 400 tastings and scores. Ouch!

Obviously this won't work. There's really only two practical options with the goal of serving the greatest number of readers by examining the most popular gins and/or tonics.

The first would be to examine a very small number of gins, say the most popular 5 against an equal number of most popular tonics for a total of 25 tastings and scores. That is doable. Another approach would be to examine a greater number of gins all with the single most popular tonic (obviously Canada Dry). The last thing you would do would be to compare G&T's using the least popular, least preferred tonic. And which one might that be?

Clearly Q-Tonic in accord with the OP.


Back to the Frozen Blunder, er Wonder

So which tonic did our moose wrangler choose? Yup...Q-Tonic of course!

The reason? Let him explain: "I also reached out to Jordan Silbert, the founder of Q Drinks, who provided me with enough samples of his great Tonic Water, Q Tonic for me to thoroughly examine each selected gin..." In other words, a freebie and his personal favorite. He proceeds to give "Jordan" (on a first name basis) a big, paragraph long, free and fawning plug. So what does he do next? He then appears to choose the roughly 20 gins out of the 40 or so he's tasted that he proudly deems as his personal favorites insofar as G&T's. In other words, his "Gin and Tonic Challenge" seems relevant only for the minority of drinkers who likewise use one of the least preferred tonics by the OP surveys. Oh, and he gives yet another reason he uses Q-Tonic, specifically because it contains less sugar and salt than the Schweppe's common in the frozen north, alluding I believe to his waistline and blood pressure readings.

So now we have a competition based on perhaps the least favorite, least preferred tonic seemingly for overweight drinkers with hypertension, lol. Just kidding, just kidding. Maybe.

To make this "challenge" even less convincing he does yet another amazing thing. Instead of using a standard recipe for all the G&T's, well, let our ringmaster explain this: " I have established a standard G&T Cocktail which I will use for every spirit in the competition (see recipe here), but I may tweak this standard cocktail as well to account for the variations in flavour for each gin.". Are you fackin kiddin me?! So now the competition is with a least favored tonic for G&T's using different recipes for different gins, and all based on his very, very personal preferences.

What is he thinking? I am flabbergasted.

Like his reviews, this gentleman apparently believes that the world of drinkers is hanging on his every word to learn his every personal preference, based on his particular and unusual palate. To me challenges like this are contrived, and designed mostly to fill space. The selection of Q-Tonic aside, this kind of personal "tweaking" insures that it's hard to consider this fair comparison. Thus, a better name for this "challenge" - how bout...

"My favorite G&T using My Favorite Gins and My Favorite Tonic - the wonderful Low Salt, Low Sugar, Low Selling Q-Tonic, and using Different Recipes for Some Gins Challenge".

Yeh, that's it...
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Dai
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Post by Dai »

Don't think i've ever had tonic with a drink.
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