What to Mix with Bombay Sapphire

Short answer: tonic, lemon, dry vermouth, ginger ale, or cranberry. Five builds are below, each one measured.

Bombay Sapphire is a London Dry gin bottled at 47% ABV in the US, which is higher than most gins on the shelf. That is the single most useful thing to know before mixing it, and it is covered in more detail below.

The flavor profile section that used to sit at the top of this page has been removed. We sell this bottle, so describing how it tastes is advertising rather than information.

The proof matters more than the botanicals

Bombay Sapphire is 47% ABV in the United States, against 40% for a lot of competing gins. A 1.5 oz pour is therefore about 1.2 standard drinks rather than 1.

Two practical consequences. Recipes written for a 40% gin will come out stronger with this, so if a drink tastes hot, that is why. And a cocktail built on 2.5 oz of it, like the martini below, is closer to two standard drinks than one.

Five builds

Gin and tonic

• 1.5 oz gin
• 4 oz tonic water
• Lime wedge or lemon slice

Build over ice, stir gently, garnish. Worth knowing that tonic carries roughly as many calories as the gin does, and that a 4 oz pour of tonic is the difference between a drink that tastes balanced and one that tastes like gin.

Gin lemon drop

• 2 oz gin
• 1 oz fresh lemon juice
• 0.5 oz simple syrup

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled glass, lemon twist. Fresh lemon rather than bottled makes more difference here than the choice of gin does.

Martini

• 2.5 oz gin
• 0.5 oz dry vermouth
• Olive or lemon twist

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled glass. Vermouth is wine and it oxidises, so keep the bottle in the fridge and replace it every couple of months. Most disappointing martinis at home are a vermouth problem, not a gin problem.

Gin buck

• 1.5 oz gin
• 4 oz ginger ale
• Lime wedge

Build over ice, stir, garnish. Ginger beer in place of ginger ale gives you a sharper, drier version.

Gin and cranberry

• 1.5 oz gin
• 3 oz cranberry juice
• Lime wedge

Build over ice, stir, garnish. Check whether your cranberry is juice or juice cocktail, since the second is considerably sweeter.

What not to bother with

Gin is one of the few spirits where the mixer can genuinely fight the base. Cola, cream and most heavy fruit juices work against a London Dry rather than with it. If you want a long sweet drink, you will get a better result from a different spirit than from forcing this one.

That is the useful version of a mixer page: the list of things worth trying is short, and knowing where it ends saves you a bottle of something.

The fine print

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