Celery Tonic Cocktail

CNN Eatocracy had a 5@5 feature this week on low-alcohol bottles, which is perfect for summer, since the bottles they featured were mostly of the aperitif/sherry variety of booze.

Cocchi Americano, one of the five featured bottles, is something I've been particularly interested in lately, since I bought it for The Vesper Martini and also used it in the Garden Martini. It's got a great balanced flavor that's both sweet and bitter--the latter due to quinine, the same ingredient that makes tonic water bitter.

The recipe included with Cocchi Americano is for the Celery Tonic. I made a few changes to it to make a closer to a gin & tonic, substituting gin for dry vermouth and celery bitters for the celery juice (namely because I don't have a device for making celery juice).

Celery Tonic
Adapted from a recipe by Christophe Hille and Chris Ronis of Northern Spy Food Company for CNN Eatocracy

1 oz. American gin (Green Hat Gin)
1 oz. Cocchi Americano
1/2 oz. Fresh lemon juice
1 dropper Bittermens celery shrub
3 oz. club soda
Lemon twist (optional garnish)

1. Combine gin, Cocchio Americano, lemon juice and celery shrub in a cocktail mixing glass with ice. Stir until combine and cold. Strain into a rocks glass with ice. Add club soda and stir to combine. Garnish with lemon twist.