The NC Double Shot: Last Call

June 30, 2011

Updated bracket is here. Confused? Click here. And now, our finale: 1 Gin and Tonic vs. 10 Margarita.

VOTE!

Bunting: The final NC Double Shot matchup is an interesting contrast: a drink I associate with summer, with ends of long days and relaxing patio chats with my pops, but also with Cheever-esque mid-century repression and dissatisfaction and the uncomfortable chloriney groping of youth…versus a concoction with far fewer Proustian neural pathways, fruity, uncomplicated, the perfect companion to a salted corn chip or a garlicky guac.

I like margaritas and I drink them more often, but I still have to vote for the geent and all its stories, sad though those stories may be. Doesn't matter, though: margaritae will ascend the throne by a 20-point margin.

Keckler: Although one could make an argument that any drink served cold is a summery cocktail, these two cocktails might be the quintessential* summer cocktails. Both involve citrus, which, though a winter product, will always squirt summer for me (probably because of lemonade stands), and each has a special component that fights various summer issues. Gin and Tonic's bitter, quinine-spiked edge is refreshing on a sweltering night, and the salt rim on a Margarita helps replenish the sodium stores you've been oozing all day.

Though a nearly nine-hour drive with a toddler and two cats in 90°+ heat did make me grab a Margarita at the earliest possible opportunity, that was an anomaly. I'm not the biggest fan of sticky sweetness on the days and nights I sweat just by breathing. Gin and Tonic is my steady and one I will never outgrow.

*Always excepting the dearly departed Pimm's Cup, which cups the essence of warm breezy days, macerates it with strawberries and crisp slices of cucumber, and pours out summer for those lucky enough to capture it in a glass.