Recipes
A’peel Southside
A gin sour with mint. Lime, sugar and mint shaken hard with a citrus-led gin, strained clean and served cold. It is the drink to make when someone says they do not like gin.
Ingredients
- 60 mL A’peel Gin
- 30 mL fresh lime juice
- 20 mL sugar syrup (1:1)
- 8 mint leaves, plus one to garnish
Method
- Put the mint leaves in the shaker and press them gently with a muddler or the back of a spoon; do not shred them.
- Add the gin, lime and syrup, then ice. Shake hard.
- Double strain into a chilled coupe and float a single mint leaf on top, slapped once against your hand to wake the oils.
Where it comes from
New York’s 21 Club has served the Southside since Prohibition and claims it. The Southside Sportsmen’s Club on Long Island has an older claim from the 1890s, and the story that Chicago’s South Side gangsters drank it to cover bad gin is good but unproven. Whichever is right, it is a gin daiquiri with mint, and it has survived because that combination works.
A’peel Gin is redistilled with citrus peel collected from Brisbane venues, so it already has the lime and orange notes the drink leans on. Keep the mint whole and the shake hard; the drink should be pale green and very cold, with no bits of leaf in it.
Alex’s pick: one of the two cocktails on this list he loves most, with the Jungle Bird.