Website: http://www.newtheatrespirits.com/
Price: $30 for a bottle that makes a lot! of tonic
Notes: Locally made, perfectly balanced tonic
G&T O'Clock!
August 10, 2012
So I blogged before, in my post about Sauce, about the New Theatre Tonic, but I feel like this stuff warrants its a post that belongs to itself!
In its store-purchased form, the tonic comes as a concentrate - half an ounce of concentrate to 4-5 ounces of soda water (or water that you carbonate if you have a fancy carbonation machine. I am not that fancy!). The bottle is small looking at 500 mL (especially given the shelf tag), but if you break it down at 1/2 a mL-1mL a drink you're looking at a significant bang for your buck! My partner-in-food-and-life made a really great point about their packaging... in that shape of bottle, it looks like it might be beer. If they packaged it up like a fancy spirit, in a tall and skinny bottle, there might be a better feeling of value because inherently I think about drinking it in small amounts, not large glasses worth!
We've had a bottle in our fridge for a while now, and have been slowly working our way through it. Because it's a locally-made product, it does have a fairly short shelf life - it needs to stay in the fridge, and only lasts a few months. We've actually mostly been drinking it sans gin as a cool, refreshing summer drink.
Unlike canned tonic that is super, duper bitter as the dominant flavour, this one has a nice sweetness to it, and isn't overly bitter. The colour is quite a lot more yellow than canned tonic. It pairs really well with Gordon's gin, like most g&ts do. We also discovered by total trial-and-error that the tonic pairs much, much better with Canada Dry club soda as the base than Schwepps. (Also: accidentally purchased Canada Dry low sodium and although it's still better than schwepps, it's obviously not as good as full sodium).
Their website has a list of places where you can currently find their tonic either on tap or in bottle form, and they frequently update their twitter and facebook pages with the same information.
