“I’ll have a Tanqueray gin on the rocks.”

“How would you like your ice?” Fragmented, nugget or cubed, shaved, dimpled on the ends with or without bubbles or mystically clear?”

“Hell, my friend, I just want a drink that’s cold . . . I don’t want to buy a tie.”

For ice afficionados this sort of dialog is not that far off the mark.

I never thought much about ice until I didn’t have enough of it.

This often occurs in Europe; they not only skimp on the booze but most often the ice.

Some say its conservation, but others say the Europeans do not want to water down their alcohol.

Whatever it is, here in the United States there is a trend toward gourmet cubes.  Some individuals go so far as BYOI when going to a party . . . that’s bring your own ice, if you didn’t figure it out before I told you.

There is nothing worse than cloudy ice, or ice with bubbles in it, or for that matter ice from those waffle trays that have been so close to stored food they absorb the taste.

And then again it could be a sanitary thing rather than a snob thing.

The purity of ice was brought into focus a few years ago when a student here in Florida discovered that the water from toilets was purer than that from ice machines, some of which was contaminated with E. coli bacteria among other unsavory things.

You see this just proves that all ice is not equal.  It may come from water, but where did the water come from and who touched the ice before it went into the glass and if it’s cloudy or not crescent shaped it certainly didn’t come from a gourmet ice machine.

After giving some thought to this ice thing and not being a snob about it all, but taking all issues into consideration, I thought I would make my cubes crystal clear out of Tanqueray gin, this would take care of the bacteria issue while resolving the European concerns of a watered down drink.