With each new season comes an exciting bounty of fresh ingredients for creating tasty dishes and cocktails. We’re not here to pick favorites per se, but spring might just have the top spot nabbed when it comes to providing seasonal cocktail ingredients you can find right in your own herb garden.
Whether your backyard is overflowing with rosemary bushes or you have a small basil plant growing in your apartment kitchen, plucking a few leaves for an herb-forward cocktail is an easy and approachable way to infuse the freshness of spring into the drinks you’re shaking up at home (just make sure you’re giving your garden-fresh ingredients a good rinse first, and no pesticides, please!)
Vibrant spring herbs also pair perfectly with a juniperus spirit like Tanqueray London Dry Gin, which is favored by mixologists for its perfectly balanced notes of botanicals and bright citrus. Many of the best spring cocktails marry the iconic botanicals of Tanqueray with simple syrups infused with the season’s best herbs, making it easy to swap in the ingredients you have at home if you feel like experimenting.
These herb-forward recipes will have you tasting springtime in no time, and even playing bartender right in your own garden.
Lavender Bees Knees
(Serves 2)
The Bees Knees is a Prohibition-era cocktail that still tastes refreshing and modern to this day. A super-simple concoction of honey syrup, quality gin, and fresh lemon, the Bees Knees is also the perfect cocktail to play around with. Fragrant and herbaceous lavender, which blooms as early as spring and through the summer, adds a complex floral flavor that complements the botanicals of Tanqueray, but you can easily swap in other herbs you have on hand — like sage or rosemary.
Ingredients:
- 3 ounces Tanqueray London Dry Gin
- 2 ounces lavender-honey simple syrup
- 2 ounces freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Garnish: lemon twist
Directions:
- Prepare a lavender-honey simple syrup by placing one cup of water, half a cup of honey, and half a cup of sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat.
- Bring the mixture to a boil until the honey and sugar have dissolved, then remove from heat and add 4 to 5 sprigs of pesticide-free, cleaned lavender. Alternatively, a tablespoon of organic dried lavender works as well.
- Allow the mixture to steep for 20 minutes before straining and allowing the syrup to cool. While the syrup is cooling, chill your cocktail glasses.
- Add Tanqueray, lemon juice, and the lavender-honey simple into a cocktail shaker, fill with ice, and shake vigorously.
- Strain into chilled cocktail glasses, and garnish with a lemon twist.
Parsley Gin Julep
(Serves 1)
When it comes to herb-forward cocktails, basil and mint tend to get all the glory. Instead, this Gin Julep features the clean, grassy taste of parsley, which grows from spring until the weather gets too chilly (depending on where you live). A Julep is traditionally made with bourbon, but this recipe swaps in crisp and flavorful Tanqueray, making it the perfect warm- weather sipper.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ ounces Tanqueray London Dry Gin
- 8 parsley leaves
- ¾ ounce fresh lime juice
- ¾ ounce simple syrup
- 1 ounce chilled club soda
- Garnish: lime wheel
Directions:
- Add parsley leaves, lime juice, and simple syrup to a cocktail shaker and muddle.
- Add Tanqueray and ice cubes and shake vigorously.
- Strain into a Collins glass full of crushed ice. Top with club soda and stir before garnishing with a lime wheel.
Green Gin
(Serves 2)
Why stick with just one herb when you can add them all into the mix? This drink is the definition of a garden cocktail, combining the elements of herbs with cooling cucumber and the floralality of elderflower liqueur. Grapefruit soda adds a fizzy element to the mix and plays beautifully off the citrus notes in Tanqueray. The recipe makes two, so it can be shared for the perfect afternoon spent on the porch.
Ingredients:
- 2 ounces Tanqueray London Dry Gin
- 2 teaspoons basil simple syrup
- Juice of one lime
- 5 to 6 fresh mint leaves
- 5 to 6 fresh basil leaves
- 3 slices cucumber
- 1 ounce elderflower liqueur
- 6 ounces grapefruit soda
Directions:
- Prepare a basil simple syrup by placing equal parts sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat.
- Bring the mixture to a boil until the sugar has dissolved, then remove from heat and add a bunch of basil.
- Allow the mixture to steep for 20 minutes before straining and allowing the syrup to cool.
- Add basil leaves, mint leaves, cucumber slices, lime juice, and simple syrup to a cocktail shaker and muddle.
- Add gin and elderflower liqueur and shake vigorously.
- Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass and top with grapefruit soda. Garnish with herbs of choice.
Basil Gimlet
(Serves 1)
When it comes to classic cocktails, it doesn’t get simpler than a Gimlet. The original Gimlet featured just two ingredients: gin and lime cordial. This drink is a playful interpretation that brings one of our favorite springtime herbs, basil, into the mix. Considering the strength (and deliciousness) of this cocktail, it’s definitely a slow springtime sipper.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ ounces Tanqueray London Dry Gin
- 5 to 6 fresh basil leaves
- 1 ounce lime juice
- 1 ounce simple syrup
Directions:
- Add 3 to 4 basil leaves, lime juice, and simple syrup to a shaker and muddle before adding Tanqueray and ice. Shake vigorously.
- Strain into a coupe glass and garnish with the remaining basil leaf.
Rosemary Gin Fizz
(Serves 1)
Rosemary is an herb that tends to be relegated to recipes used in the colder months, but this refreshing gin fizz is here to prove that it can delight the palate any time. The lemony-pine flavor of the herb plays well with Tanqueray’s juniper notes, and the citrus elements of both get punched up by the addition of fresh lemon juice.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ ounces Tanqueray London Dry Gin
- ½ ounce rosemary simple syrup
- ½ ounce fresh lemon juice
- 3 ounces club soda
- Garnish: lemon slice
- Garnish: sprig of rosemary
Directions:
- Prepare a rosemary simple syrup by placing equal parts sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat.
- Bring the mixture to a boil until the sugar has dissolved, then remove from heat and add a sprig of rosemary.
- Allow the mixture to steep for 20 minutes before removing the rosemary and allowing the syrup to cool.
- Add Tanqueray, lemon juice, and cooled rosemary simple into an ice-filled cocktail shaker and shake vigorously.
- Strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice and top with club soda. Garnish with a lemon slice and sprig of fresh rosemary.
This article is sponsored by Tanqueray.
