Classic cocktails don't get much simpler than the G&T. It's essentially only two ingredients--albeit two pungent yet flavorful ingredients that, when combined together, can be delicious or dreadful. Squeeze in too much or too little lime juice and you can change the flavor of the drink even further. Last week we discussed gin, today, let's talk tonic.

Originally a vehicle for malaria medicine, tonic water is known for its distinctive bitter, aromatic flavor. This flavor comes quinine, originally extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree, but now synthesized in a lab. In British colonies in the tropical climates in the late 1800s, quinine was dissolved in carbonated water and mixed with gin to mask the bitter flavor, before being dispensed as medicine. And thusly, the gin & tonic was born.

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There was a time I thought I didn't like gin. But then I realized it was tonic I didn't like, thanks in part to a bad experience when I was 10. But that people, is a story for Part II of "Building a Better Gin & Tonic," the final two installments of In the Cups. Today, I want to talk about gin.

The most common styles of gin are London Dry, Genever or Dutch-style, Old Tom, Plymouth, and what I'll call "Modern." In Europe there are a bunch of regulations about gin regarding pot-distillation, botanicals and other bullshit. Gin is basically flavored vodka, but which flavors are added, and even how they're added, can impact the resulting product. For the purposes of building a better gin & tonic however, we'll just review the basics of these styles and what cocktails they work in best.

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Rye whiskey has become increasingly popular in recent years thanks to the sharper, more complex flavors it has over bourbon. If bourbon is a domesticated dog, rye whiskey is part wolf. It's gamier, spicier and a touch more full-bodied than bourbon. It was one of the first whiskeys made in the U.S. and is traditionally the spirit of choice for many classic cocktails such as the Old-Fashioned, Manhattan and Sazerac.

While bourbon is one of the best-selling whiskeys in the world and available from dozens of distilleries, rye is less common. Because of the challenge of working with the grain, many distilleries use a great deal of barley or corn along with rye in their whiskeys. Beginning tomorrow however, a new rye whiskey will be available. Woodinville Whiskey Company is releasing its rye whiskey on Saturday April 14--and it's 100% rye.

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Easter isn't usually thought of as a big drinking holiday, but if you run with the devil-may-care crowd, Sunday is the perfect day to throw back some cocktails. And I'm not talking about mimosas--we've talked about brunch drinks before. Easter Sunday calls for something a bit stronger and a bit more, shall we say, appropriate for the occasion.

Bloody Mary Magdalene
This variation of the Bloody Mary comes from fellow heathen Marc, who blogs at baketard.com. Marc throws an annual "Burn-In-Hell" brunch and serves up some strong libations to go with the feast. His Bloody Mary Magdalene includes an unholy amount of hellfire heat, thanks to heavy doses of horseradish, hot sauce and perhaps the blood of Christ. Find the recipe on Marc's blog and garnish these with some spicy peppers.

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For a cheap vodka to use in various cocktails, the pros agree Wodka is a great value.

It's not that I'm a cheapskate (That's a lie. I am.)...It's just that I come from the school of thought that says you should splurge on spirits when you're drinking them neat (or in something simple like a Manhattan), and skimp if you are adding various juices and liqueurs to your drink. Mixing cocktails at home is fun, but it can break the bank if you are lining your liquor cabinet with top shelf spirits. And if you drink like me, you have to consider quantity over quality.

I've crowd sourced this week's column by polling friends, cocktail enthusiasts, booze reps, bartenders, and bar owners. My conclusion: Bartenders are willing to go much more bottom shelf (or at least admit they do) than home cocktail enthusiasts. But most of them agree on a budget-priced base spirit for some of the main spirits: Tequila, vodka, gin, bourbon, rye, Scotch, and rum.

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The Old Fashioned cocktail is the drink of choice for Don Draper, Creative Director at Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce, the Madison Avenue advertising agency in Mad Men, which premieres season five this Sunday night on AMC. It's the first drink we saw when the series premiered in July 2007. The drink enjoyed by Don Draper throughout the last four seasons however, is not necessarily the truest form of the cocktail. Its period appropriate--like everything else in the show--but is a somewhat bastardized version of the original cocktail.

One of the earliest recipes for the Old Fashioned is simple enough Don's daughter Sally could mix it up: "Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece of ice, a piece of lemon-peel, and one jigger whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass." This drink was first called the "Old Fashioned" at a gentlemen's club--the Pendennis Club--in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1880s. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at the club, and since it was in bourbon country, the drink was typically made with bourbon.

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The luck of the Irish has blessed its whiskey industry, which is experiencing a surge in popularity and sales in recent years. For St. Patrick's Day there are worse ways to celebrate than supporting the distilling industry's return to greatness (see: green beer). The smooth, easy to drink whiskey is the perfect gateway to brown spirits.

The tradition of distilling whiskey in Ireland dates back to the1200s. The word whiskey derives from the Gaelic for water of life, uisce beatha. It had it's heyday in the 1700s, when the were over 1,200 distilleries in Ireland. Sales soared in Europe when disease wiped out vineyards in France and devastated wine and brandy production. After World War I, Prohibition in the U.S. and Ireland's war for independence however, whiskey production all but died out due to swiftly declining demand by the 1920s. Today, with interest in whiskey from anywhere skyrocketing, and improved quality of pot distilling techniques in Ireland, Irish whiskey is back, and there's more to appreciate than a shot of Jameson with your Guinness. St. Patrick's Day gives us the opportunity to celebrate this spirit, rather than making some ill-fated decision, like drinking an Irish car bomb.

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On Saturday March 31, the Washington Cask Beer Festival returns to Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion. This year however, the Washington Brewers Guild is the presenting sponsor and the main beneficiary. The festival was originally founded by a handful of Guild member breweries in 2000, one year after the organization was formed, in an effort to create a platform for showcasing what the Washington brewers had to offer. The event remains one of the most popular events for Northwest craft beer lovers and brewers, with over 70 unique, one-of-a-kind beers available, from over 30 breweries, including Airways, Epic Ales, Dick's, Big Al's, Black Raven, Boundary Bay, and more.

The festival requires beers to be naturally conditioned in the cask, without the use of carbon dioxide. These beers are less carbonated than most and are served a little less cold as well, but what you lose in cold and fizz, you gain in flavor and aroma. The small batches brewed for the festival allow brewers to get creative with unique flavor additions and combinations. Last year, there was a rosemary-infused beer from Elysian, a dry-hopped and citrus-infused IPA from Maritime Pacific, and a chocolate stout from Pike Brewing.

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At Brouwer's Café in Fremont this Saturday, there will be over 60 barley wines to sip and sample, many from Pacific Northwest brewers. The intense flavor and seasonality of barley wines make them more of a rare treat than everyday drinking beers. I've always approached them as beer, but it's really best to enjoy them in slow sips, like you'd enjoy wine. And at upwards of 10% alcohol, it's best not to down three or four glasses of the stuff.

Some of the earliest barley wines were a result of the first runnings in multiple-brew single mashes, according to The Oxford Companion to Beer. The style was popularized in aristocratic houses of 18th century Britain, where they were brewed to be "of a vinous nature," according to a 1736 book, The London and Country Brewer. These beers were often aged in wood for a year or more before serving, and were brewed "to answer the like purpose of wine" at the table. That was probably a lot easier than trying to get wine when you were at war with say, France, at the time...

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For Sunday night's Academy Award ceremonies, the simplest drink choice is Champagne. After all, what says celebration better than a glass of bubbly? But that seems like the easy way out, especially given cinema's memorable drinking moments over the years. None of the nine nominees for Best Picture this year has a particularly memorable drinking scene, but that doesn't mean they don't bring certain drinks or spirits to mind.

We've taken this year's Best Picture nominees and paired them with a drink that best matches the theme, era or location of the film:

Midnight in Paris
This romantic comedy written and directed by Woody Allen, is set in Paris, where the protagonist Gil, a screenwriter in a less than fulfilling relationship, finds a magical portal to other eras when the clock strikes midnight. In one scene, he's transported the 1920s, where he meets his idol Ernest Hemingway.

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