I love gin.

I love gin and tonic.

The Spanish love gin and tonic even more than I do.

As a person raised where juniper trees grow wild, I honestly thought that wasn’t possible, but it’s true.

And here is the evidence that my love is the lesser:

I don’t really know anything about tonic. Or perhaps more correctly, I have not made a study of tonics. When I enter a bar, I don’t have a favored tonic that I want combined with my favored gin. I don’t have a specific gin and specific tonic I drink when lounging on the terraza with friends on a Saturday afternoon. I don’t have a different specific gin and specific tonic that I drink when urging on my favorite soccer team.

A lineup of five different tonics in Cafe La Ville in Ribadasella, Spain: Fever-Tree, Blue Tonic, Nordic Blue, Nordic, and Schweppes.

An example of how serious the Spanish love of tonic and how complex the taste spectrum is in the Spanish mind?

A café (by no means a special cocktail bar) in Oviedo had a printed menu I could study. There were no less than seven tonics available for the casual customer to chose from. I transcribe:

• Fentiman’s, “Botanically Brewed Tonic”
• Fever-Tree, “Premium Indian Tonic”
• Indi & Co, “Quinine estract natural”
• Nordic Blue (No tag line! Hire a new marketing team! Maybe it sells itself.)
• Noric Mist, “Finest World”
• Schwepps, “Original Indian Tonic Premium”
• Segram’s, “Since 1857 Tonic Water”

On prime time television, competing brands advertise tonic. There is no cola war in Spain (Coke’s won that.), but there is a fierce battle between tonics.

Tasting between media mortal shells,

Chris