Gin goes back a long way. Long before today’s current obsession with the detriment that alcohol is (supposedly) causing to our society, there was another epoch in which booze — gin in particular — was tearing (actually) the fabric of society apart.
Those days, of course, were the days of the gin craze in England back in the 1700’s. The poor in those days lived not just in poverty but in abject squalor, and there were a lot more of the people qualifying for that classification. Yet gin could be had for very little money, and London was awash in the stuff — they were drinking something like 60 litres of the gin per person each year.
Clearly, we’ve come a long way since then.
And so too has the gin. Most of the stuff people threw down their gullets in those days was poor quality and hardly potable. And while some brands have maintained their recipes over the course of a hundred years or more, there’s been new brands appearing on the market as gin continues its resurgence in popularity.
Here’s a few very modern gins you might want to taste, and a trio of cocktails: a blue drink, a very modern (and very red) beetroot number, and a classic drink out of the 1951 book, Bottom’s Up by Ted Saucier.
Blue Gin Martini
50ml The London No. 1 Gin
10ml Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
Stir all ingredients down, strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a twist of lemon.
The Madcap Cocktail
45ml D1 London Gin
15ml dry curacao
15ml beetroot juice
20ml lemon juice
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
Pinch of salt
Shake all ingredients and double strain over block ice in a coupe.
Adapted from a recipe by The Barber Shop, Sydney.
Hotel Georgia Cocktail
60ml 1 & 9 London Dry Gin
30ml orgeat syrup
15ml fresh lemon juice
10 drops of orange flower water
1 egg white
1 orange twist as garnish
Place all the ingredients, except the garnish, into a cocktail shaker. Shake well for 10 to 15 seconds, add ice, and shake again for another 10 to 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and add the garnish.
Adapted from a recipe in Ted Saucier’s Bottoms Up, published in 1951.
Modern Gins
The London No. 1 Gin
There’s 12 botanicals in the mix: orange peel, bergamot, savoury, lemon peel, cinnamon, angelica root, coriander, cassia, juniper of Dalmatia, almond, liquorice, and lily root. It’s three times distilled by Charles Maxwell in London, using a pot still in small batches, with English grain spirit as its base.
Combined Wines
D1 London Gin
This is a juniper-driven spirit that has a hit of nettles on the nose, with orange blossom, juniper and lemon and coriander leaf flavours on the palate finishing with a lingering sweetness.
Combined Wines
Beefeater 24
Crafted in 2009, this represents master distiller Desmond payne’s first recipe for a premium gin for Beefeater and it has quickly become a standard in bars around the world.
Pernod Ricard
Star of Bombay
Using a slow-distillation method, the 10 Bombay botanicals (plus by ambrette seed and bergamot orange peel) undergo greater extraction resulting in a fuller flavoured gin, bottled at 47.5%.
Bacardi Lion
1 & 9 London Dry Gin
Here the French are taking on the English at their own game. Designed in collaboration with bartenders, a couple of the ten botanicals are pretty unique: Jamaican chilli and Chinese ginger.
Cerbaco
Hendrick’s Gin
Hendrick’s can lay special claim to being an emblematic gin of recent times. It’s addition of rose and cucumber set it apart from other gins, along with the eccentric branding and the classic serve of a slice of cucumber in their G&Ts.
William Grant & Sons
Ford’s Gin
It’s very much a traditional, no bones about it London dry style of gin. Launched just a couple of years ago, it comes in at a bartender-desired higher ABV. In fact, the bartender input into the product is what makes it a modern gin.
Vanguard Luxury Brands
Broker’s Gin
You don’t get much more London Dry than this brand. Launched in 1998, it adopted that icon of English banking, the bowler’s hat, and is based on a recipe that dates back 200 years. So it’s a traditional gin from the modern era, then.
island2island
Bulldog Gin
French lavendar, dragon eye, and lotus leaves are just a few of the more interesting botanicals that mark this London dry gin out from the rest.
Campari Australia