Red Snapper Recipe
60ml Gin Mare
75ml fresh tomato juice
3 dashes of pimento bitters
3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
3 dashes of hot sauce
A dash of lemon to taste
Dash of salt
Roll all ingredients in a shaker — don’t shake — and strain into a tall glass over ice. Garnish with a sprig of rosemary and a celery stick.
Story by Sam Bygrave
Photography by Christopher Pearce
Presented by Lewis Jaffrey
In association with Gin Mare
We know you know about balance, right? A well structured drink might have a hit of acid, a touch of sweetness — perhaps a little bitterness to carry it across the palate. Well, that’s the three of the five basic tastes accounted for in most of your drinks.
In addition to a taste for sweetness, sourness, and bitterness, we humans — yes, bartenders included — have taste receptors on our tongue that pick up saltiness, and that fifth taste, umami.
Saltiness doesn’t often get a run with drinks, though when it does — even at a minimal, hard to detect level — the flavour of drinks is amplified.
Umami — or savouriness — isn’t one of the more common elements in a drink, though. Umami is a result of amino acids called glutamates, which signify to us the presence of protein in a food. Foods like mushrooms, kombu, and parmesan cheese are high in these glutamates. They probably won’t taste great in a drink, though.
Thankfully, tomato is one food chock full of glutamates, and one we’re quite accustomed to juicing behind the bar: the Bloody Mary being one bartender must have after a big night.
This month, we’ve doubled down on the savouriness, with the Red Snapper recipe here. Not only do we have the umami-powered tomato juice, we’ve also opted to use Gin Mare, a Spanish gin which uses a raft of Mediterranean botanicals like olives, rosemary, thyme and basil — rosemary and thyme being two particularly savoury herbs that amplify the tomato umami-bomb. Garnish the drink with a stick of celery and a sprig of rosemary to cap it off, and you’ve got an umami-rich drink which will see you through the morning after.
Notes on Ingredients
Gin Mare is a Mediterranean premium gin from Spain. The difference between Gin Mare and other gins is that it uses olives, rosemary, thyme and basil as main botanicals, giving it a savoury twist. Exceptionally versatile, it makes a great G & T, garnished with a rosemary sprig, as well as a perfect base for many classic gin cocktails.