Normally gin is not my preferred method of preserving my liver. However some great ladies I know may have swayed me to the dark side. So just in time for spring, here are two gin cocktails that are easy to make and even easier to drink.

Shana Sussman’s spin on the Greenport Cooler

My friend Shana is a New Mexico transplant from Brooklyn. A friend of hers jokes that her yin and yang is her Ramones old lifestyle versus her new Gram Parsons lifestyle. So to keep her new cowboy boots in check, every now and then she has to pull out a reminder of the East Coast. This drink recipe is her latest yin move to add balance on the Ramones side of life.

Aine: I know you told me where this drink came from but I think we were drinking them at the time, so the memory is gin fuzzy. Please refresh.

Shana:  The drink was named for Greenport, Conneticut which is where the guy created it. (Later changed the name to greenwood cooler – greenwood heights is the name of the Brooklyn neighborhood where the bar is/where I lived.) The bar was called Quarter.

Recipe:

– 4 cucumber slices

-1/4 lemon wedge

-mint

-3 shots fresh grapefruit juice

-2 gin shots

-1 shot simple syrup

Muddle mint, lemon and cucumber. Add Grapefruit juice, gin, simple syrup and crushed ice. Enjoy.

The IN-FLATO

I’ll admit that the name of this drink came not from the drink’s inventor, but from imbibers of this amazing cocktail at a holiday party. My friend Heidi Flato is the inventor of the drink, and she is far too classy to give any cocktail of hers such a ridiculous name. She makes the cocktails. We fools think of silly names. It should probably be a house rule that when one makes such classy cocktails, they don’t need a name.

Recipe:

-Gin

-Grapefruit soda such as San Pellegrino (can substitute grapefruit juice and club soda)

-Mint

-Lemon

-Lime

Squeeze half of a lime and half a lemon into a tall glass with ice. Add 1 part gin to 2 parts grapefruit soda or juice. Add fresh mint and a lime wedge. If using grapefruit soda, skip the club soda. Enjoy.