Ace Basin Cocktail Company
The story of our old fashioned small batch tonic
Langdon’s Original Tonic is a small batch craft tonic syrup made “the old fashioned way” using all-natural ingredients—adding flavor and character to your favorite cocktails that would make Gatsby swoon. The recipe for Langdon’s Original Tonic was created by co-founder, Mark Langdon, 15 years ago in our family kitchen. It was our family’s answer to one too many mediocre gin and tonics made with mass produced, store-bought tonic waters full of sugar, artificial flavors and synthetic quinine.
A brief history of tonic
Originally cultivated by the Quechua people of Peru and Bolivia, quinine was extracted from the Cinchona tree to treat malaria fever, hence the name “fever tree” was coined. Spanish explorers found that the Peruvian people were using the bark to treat fevers and that it was effective. By the 1840's, British colonials were using the bark to treat and prevent malaria during their voyages back and forth to India.
However, given the bitter nature of the quinine, people began mixing the Cinchona bark with sugar and carbonated water to make it more palatable. Eventually tonic water became commercially available and became a popular cocktail mixer. Hence the Gin & Tonic was born.
All natural bar mixers for craft cocktails at home
Langdon’s Original Tonic is made with pure juices and oils of oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit, lemongrass, allspice and juniper berries, as well as other select herbs and spices and is sweetened just right with pure cane sugar. We are proud to add that our quinine is extracted naturally during our steeping process from the bark of the Cinchona or “fever tree.” The bark is also what gives Langdon’s Original Tonic its fine amber color.
Our family tonic recipe is yours to enjoy
Over the years, our friends and family have shared and enjoyed Langdon’s Original Tonic in the places we love most: from our back porch in Blythewood, SC to the Scanawah Island dock in the heart of the ACE Basin.
Langdon’s Original Tonic represents all the things we feel makes this life worth doing: the fundamental importance of family, the natural beauty and divine spirit of the Lowcountry, and the sublime satisfaction of that first sip of a world-class cocktail.
We decided to share Langdon’s Original Tonic with the rest of the world in hopes of bringing that same feeling and experience to cocktail lovers everywhere.
