When I was a pube-free and sexually nonplussed 13-year-old boy, my lunches consisted solely of meringue shells purchased from my local branch of Goodfellow & Steven. I ate like this for six months. No complex carbs, fruit, vegetables or protein. Just immaculate sugar mainlined into my veins, a game of brinksmanship with type 2 diabetes shedding years off my life with every perfect bite. This month’s drinks review choice is heading into similar territory. That’s right, it’s time for mixers, the liquid equivalent of a meringue shell without the filling. Can these gin-diluters stand on their own two feet without alcohol, or will they crumble like a bow-legged Bambi playing barbwire jump-rope?

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Remember trying your first flavoured water and thinking it tasted like someone had poured a bag of sugar into a thin ghastly mixture? Dash Water is the opposite of that, light enough to avoid overpowering your palate while offering a subtle flavour that’s light years ahead of H2O. It’s posh water, the kind of drink a toff called Cornelius might offer you while cradling a croquet mallet in his hands and telling you about the house his papa bought him in Islington. But let’s not hold that against it. Despite an upmarket presentation, this is A+ hydration. 

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Next, Fever-Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water, and if you thought that the punch of a gin and tonic came from the gin, think again. A sip of this bitter mixture will leave you performing more facial contortions than a leather-faced contestant at the World Gurning Championships, such is its grapefruit-like intensity. Drinking this without alcohol feels like brawling with a bruiser in a back alley: it might not rough you up like a heavy night of gin, but you’ll still feel winded. 

^{Picture: Rebecca Jones}

Less punishing is Fentimans Pink Rhubarb Tonic Water, which is bitter enough to balance out alcohol without Fever-Tree’s tastebud-napalming assault. Much like Dash, there’s a lightness of touch here. This one’s both a filling and a meringue shell, and for that it receives our Figurative Pavlova Of The Month Award. Your trophy is in the post, Mr F.