"What most bartenders will immediately pick up on is the orange nose, giving way to subtle lavender notes. The taste has a deep green, bitter flavour from the wormwood, holy thistle and quinine. Bartenders should find this combination amiable for crafting into cocktails with Hendrick's gin, which has characteristic floral notes and spicy bitterness that come from the caraway seed and cubeb berries. As a result, we have a perfectly balanced liquid, not overly sweet like most cordials," says Gracie.
To illustrate the point, Hendrick's UK Ambassador Duncan McRae created the first cocktail to be made with Quinetum. He commented: "The classic G&T is as refreshing a drink as you're likely to find and this Quinetum Collins is similarly light, but also completely different to a G&T in all the best possible ways."
The new cordial is presented in a vessel modelled on a 1940s poison bottle discovered in an old London bric-a-brac shop. The word 'quinine' originally derived from the Quechua (Inca) word for the cinchona tree bark where quinine occurs naturally. The tree was named after a Countess of Chinchón, the wife of a viceroy of Peru, who, in 1638, was introduced by native Quechua healers to the medicinal properties of cinchona bark. More than 200 years later, Thomas Whiffen did much to develop the use of quinine and its related products at the chemical factory where he worked. He was responsible for coining the name 'Quinetum' for the 'Pure Alkaloids of East India Red Bark' at his factory, which was known as 'Quinine Works Battersea'.
This new product follows on from trials of Battersea Quinine Cordial in 2009. However, the recipe of Quinetum is markedly different from Battersea.
With only 9600 bottles available from the latest batch, Quinetum will not be obtainable from retailers or wholesalers for purchase. It will be given to select bartenders to experiment with and concoct the most daring and delicious cocktails.
