Last week the Gin and Tonic celebrated its 150th year but lovers of the classic cocktail have been left wondering what one tastes like after almost a month and a half without supplies of good tonic.

There are normally two brands of tonic for sale in Turkey. One is produced by Coca Cola under the Schweppes brand and the other is produced by a Turkish company and goes under the brand name of Fruco Tonic.

The Schweppes brand, in the opinion of www.fethiyetimes.com, is the best.

However, supplies of Schweppes have dried up over the last few months and it has been impossible to find a bottle anywhere in the area.

We have asked the shops why there is no tonic and they generally just shrug their shoulders. However, one shopkeeper told us that Schweppes were ‘retooling’ their plant.

Interestingly we recently received an email from one of our readers about Schweppes tonic water on another matter.

Bill is a regular FT reader and emailed us to praise the customer service of Coca Cola after he had emailed them to complain about a problem with a batch of tonic water he had bought from a local cash and carry. The tonic was yellow in colour and lacked ‘fizz’ so he emailed Coca Cola in the US, owners of the Schweppes brand, via their website to complain.

Bill said he was amazed that after only a week he received a phone call and then a personal visit from the local Coca Cola representative here in Fethiye.

The rep replaced the entire tonic batch and added a few bottles extra. He said Coca Cola would test the tonic to make sure it wasn’t contaminated.

A couple of weeks later he received an email from Coca Cola saying that they had tested the tonic and had found no contamination.

They said that it was likely that the yellow colour was caused by exposure of the tonic to bright sunlight – a plausible explanation especially given the strength of the sun in the summer. They didn’t comment on the lack of ‘Fizz’ though.

So when will supplies return to the shelves?

The good news is that earlier this week Schweppes tonic was spotted in trendy new shaped bottles in the Tekel shop near to the Cultural Centre and the Carrefour supermarket in the centre of town.

So it seems the mystery is now solved and the 'drought' was all down to the introduction of a new design of bottle.