I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to Monkey 47 gin.

The origins of Monkey 47 could have come from some sort of work of fiction. The original recipe is credited to one Wing Commander Mongomery Collins; born in 1909 in Madras in British India to a British Diplomat, he was posted to Germany in 1945, after World War 2. It is said that Montgomery was deeply affected by the destruction of Berlin and resolved to support the reconstruction of Germany and took a personal hand in rebuilding the Berlin Zoo. During this work he came to sponsor an Egret Monkey by the name of Max.

On leaving the Air Force, he opened a guest-house in the Black Forest, which he called “Zum wilden Affen” (the Wild Monkey) – notice the theme building?

Juniper was abundant in the Black Forest and being an English Gentleman, Montgomery enjoyed his gin. Decades later, during renovation of the guest house, a wooden box was discovered, which contained a hand-labelled bottle and some papers. The bottle’s label had a hand-drawn monkey and bore the moniker “Max the Monkey – Schwarzwald Dry Gin”. The papers included all manner of notes and photographs, but critically a list of ingredients used to create the gin, many of which came from the Black Forest region as well as some familiar spices from India.

The botanical list is formidable, running to a massive 47 ingredients (hence the 47 in the name). I have only managed to piece-together 41 from the bottle, the website and the internet at large.

Monkey 47 Gin

• Acacia
• Acorus Calamus
• Almond
• Angelica
• Bitter Orange
• Blackberry
• Cardamom
• Cassia
• Chamomile
• Cinnamon
• Citron Verbena
• Cloves
• Coriander
• Cranberries
• Cubeb
• Dog Rose
• Elderflower
• Ginger
• Grains Of Paradise
• Hawthorne Berries
• Hibiscus Abelmoshus
• Hibiscus Syriacus
• Honeysuckle
• Jasmine
• Juniper
• Kaffir Lime
• Lavender
• 

  Monkey 47 Logo - The botanical list is so long, I have room for another image.

  Lemon
• Lemon Balm
• Lemongrass
• Licorice
• Lingonberries
• Mondara Didyma
• Nutmeg
• Orris
• Pimento
• Pomelo
• Rose Hip
• Sage
• Sloe
• Spruce

Monkey 47 is a fairly potent gin at 47% and comes in 500ml bottles.

Where the Hendrick’s bottle is what a designer imagines an apothecary’s bottle to be like, the Monkey 47 bottle actually is what they were like; smooth, round-shouldered, thin neck and a broad lip; it is like something from a moth-balled chemistry lab.

The bottle is stoppered with a simple straight-sided cork, again like something from a chemistry lab (before rubber bungs became common). Girding the cork is an engraved metal ring bearing the Latin words “EX PLURIBUS UNUM”, which means “Out of many, one” and was once one of the three mottos on the US seal (changed in 1956 to “In God we trust”). Presumably, in this context, it refers to the one product coming from the very many botanicals.

The neat gin is rich and aromatic, with a complex nose. Tasting rewards the mouth with an incredibly intense journey that encompasses herbal, floral, citrus, fruity and spice notes aplenty. There is a familiar resinous flavour that is reminiscent of both Adnams Copperhouse and (less so) Tanqueray 10; indeed, both Hibiscus and Chamomile make an appearance in Monkey 47. The juniper is definitely there, but the supporting cast is like an orchestra. Clear among these is pine, or rather I suspect spruce, which supports the juniper with clear crispness.

The floral and herbal notes are clear and powerful; there is a slight geranium taste and I think there is a honeysuckle/jasmine flavour identifiable. A hint of pomelo is present (redolent of Bloom and Whitley Neill). This is the fruitiest gin I have ever tasted and it is smooth to boot.

Initially, I had thought that this was purely a sipping gin which would be a crime to mix, but trying it with tonic water was a revelation. The finer points of the aromatic flavours really come alive; the citrus comes out and the floral & herbaceous notes veritably explode. The finish is long, dry and spicy and herbal.

Every stage, the attack, middle and finish of Monkey 47 is complex and different from the last. Each mouthful is an engaging roller-coaster of discovery and joy, and it never gets old. It is an intriguing gin and difficult to leave alone. I desperately need to get my hands on more, but at a production of only 2,500 bottles per year, it is hard to find and the price reflects this; at about £38 for 500ml, Monkey 47 gin is probably the most expensive in-production gin I have tried. Is it worth the price? Yes, but as a treat.

Edit – Incidentally, the ring on the cork appears to be the same size as my wedding ring. Size U.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting a branch of Waitrose in the sprawling metropolis that some call London. Presented with a near-bewildering array of gins that I have yet to try I picked Adnams Copperhouse Gin. This was originally brought to my attention by @BlackPlastic who raved about it, and came very close to buying me a bottle on more than one occasion.

Adnams, once famous for beers such as Broadside and SSB, seem to have branched-out significantly in recent years. With the opening of their Copper House Distillery in November 2010, both Vodka and Gin have recently joined the Adnams portfolio.

Adnams Copper House Gin is a distilled gin, and unlike many gin producers, they make it from scratch. East Anglian malted barley is brewed into a “beer wash” before being stripped into a “low wine” and then rectified into pure spirit and re-distilled with the botanicals into gin, all under the mastery of Head Distiller, John McCarthy.

Adnams Copperhouse Gin

Speaking of botanicals, Adnams Copper House claims six; these are…

• Juniper berries
• Coriander
• Lemon peel
• Orange peel
• Orris root
• Hibiscus flowers

The bottle is stoppered with a cork and is stamped from an increasingly popular mould, with a round footprint and thick glass bottom. The (pseudo) copper-foil wrapping at the top of the bottle is a nice touch and the simple label is elegant and understated.

Uncorking was about as pleasing as it gets (squeak-pop) and the scent from the bottle-top is that of juniper and sweet creamy notes.

Sampled neat, this is a savoury, herbacious, oily gin with a good juniper pay-load. It has a great depth of complexity to it that reminds me strongly of Tanqueray 10. In fact, so convinced was I that the herbaceous resinous notes were chamomile, I refused to believe the first source of information I found which listed the botanicals (sorry Summerfruitcup, I should have known better than to doubt you).

Mixing Copper House with Fever-Tree tonic (3:1 ratio) produces a tremendously aromatic G&T. The phantom chamomile shines through and this G&T furnishes you with a fresh attack and a long lingering roller-coaster after-taste that seems to cycle through half of the herb-garden. There is an underlying earthy sweetness that holds back the astringency slightly, but is far from being enough to make this a sweet G&T.

I have no idea what hibiscus tastes like (I did work my way through a box of hibiscus and rosehip tea several years ago, but that doesn’t seem to have helped), so there is a strong possibility that the slightly frankincensey-chamomile tang is wholly from this flower.

My only criticism of Adnams Copper House Gin would be that every time I have drank more than one G&T in an evening, I have experienced very disturbed sleep. At first I though it just a bad night, as sometimes happens, but as I worked my way through the bottle, a pattern emerged. Doing a little digging revealed that in some, hibiscus tea can have a mild hallucinogenic and intoxicating effect; to be honest, I was drinking gin, so was damn-well expecting to become intoxicated, and I didn’t notice any hallucinations , so maybe this is a complete dead-end. Still, the correlation between poor sleep and Copperhouse consumption is a strong one.

Still, who needs sleep every night? Adnams Copper House Gin is a fine product and I will certainly be buying more. I need to get my hands on some Adnams First Rate Gin – by all accounts, the classier, more expensive sister of Copper House.

A recent trip to Waitrose revealed a greatly expanded gin range gracing their shelves. Alongside their normal gins were No. 3 Gin (which is fantastic news as it gives me somewhere local to buy it), Chase Gin and Bloom. Two new gins to choose from; the decision really came down to cost as I already had too much in the trolley.

Bloom Gin

Bloom gin has been on my radar for some time as I like floral elements in my gin, so it was with some excitement that I took it home.

Produced by Joanne Moore, (reputed to be the world’s only female master distiller, although I am not sure what Lesley Gracie, Master Distiller at Hendrick’s would say about that), Bloom forms part of the Greenall’s portfolio of spirits.

It is said by many that Bloom gin is obviously aimed at the female market due to it light floral notes and bottle design, but I rather like the bottle with its Art Nouveau vine-work and its tall elegance. Maybe I am just in-touch with my feminine-side.

The thing that marks Bloom gin out in the market is its botanical list…

• Juniper
• Coriander
• Angelica
• Cubeb Berries
• Chamomile
• Honeysuckle
• Pomelo

There is a core of traditional botanicals there, but more than half of them are not usually found in gin.

Uncorking (yes it is stoppered with a cork) and sniffing the neck of the bottle punished me with a rather unpleasant scent of wet earth and slight mouldy/musty smells. Wiping around the inside of the neck with a clean damp cloth eliminated the smell and replacing the cork with one I had kicking around saw it banished for good. I assume this bottle was corked but luckily these unsavoury scents didn’t seem to taint the gin.

Pouring a little into a glass and sticking my nose in for a good lung-full revealed a slight alcohol smell and mild botanicals – generic fruitiness and very faintly floral. Bloom’s nose is certainly light on the juniper.

Sipping the neat product rewards the mouth with a smooth but undistinguished gin. The juniper is light, constrained, almost absent and there is a undefined slight citrus taste but little of the anticipated floral notes. There was an underpinning taste of alcohol that, while not powerful, was a major contributor to the overall taste.

Mixing up my standard G&T (1:4 with Fever-Tree) drove off distinctly floral and citrus notes. In the mouth, the Pomelo was  in evidence but the floral aspects were hard to find. The juniper was weak and the all-in-all, the gin was somewhat lost.

Mixing stronger and stronger G&Ts eventually lead to a ratio that suited this gin. A 1:2 ratio allows this gin to shine and combines well with the tonic water. The floral notes really begin to come to the fore but I was unable to isolate honeysuckle (odd given that I have tonnes of the stuff in the garden and thought it would be instantly recognisable) or chamomile (another very distinctive taste/scent that dominates Tanqueray 10); the floral notes reminded me of a slightly softer version of geranium. There is a sweet fruity citrus undercurrent running through this gin and overall it reminded me of a slightly watered-down Whitley Neill; much less in the juniper department.

While the stronger G&T was very pleasant, I kept coming back to the similarities with Whitley Neill and how it doesn’t quite cut it in comparison.

For people who enjoy lighter gins, Bloom should be a great choice. If you like heavy-hitting monsters of juniper, you might want to give it a miss. I can imagine this gin working very well with elderflower but sadly, I had run out of both cordial and St Germain.

Tonight, I Tanqueray.

This is a gin that has graced my shelves a few times in the last year, but it always disappears so quickly and I have never managed to get around to writing my thoughts down. Tonight, this changes.

Tanqueray Gin

To many, Tanqueray is eponymous with truly high-quality gin; it is the benchmark that others are measured against and it is a well-deserved reputation.

Tanqueray’s botanical list is fairly short, numbering only four…

• Juniper Berries
• Coriander Seed
• Angelica Root
• Liquorice Root

What no citrus?

It’s presented in a distinctive cocktail-shaker shaped bottle which is instantly recognisable on the shop shelf or the back-bar.

Uncorking the bottle, or rather unscrewing it, and giving it a good sniff reveals everything you would expect from a London Dry gin. It is very juniper-forward and in spite of its 43.1% ABV, there isn’t much of a whiff of alcohol.

Tasting the stuff neat follows-through with the juniper-heavy experience. It is smooth, balanced and creamy without any harshness from that high alcohol content (not that surprising, being quadruple distilled). The coriander is present but subtle and the sweet earthiness of the two roots holds it all together very well.

Mixing Tanqueray with tonic water rewards you with a tremendous G&T; it delivers a massive juniper hit and the sweet creaminess balances with the quinine very well. It has a beautiful, biting, dry finish. This really is the Spinal Tap of gin and tonic; someone has taken a good gin and dialled it up to 11. It is like drinking some super-charged G&T drawn out of someone’s fevered dreams about gin and tonic. It is everything I look for in G&T writ large.

Tanqueray is a forthright, loud gin that delivers quality in spades. It really goes to show how you don’t need much to make a great gin. There are no gimmicks, no exotic fruits or outlandish distilling practices, just a simple London Dry gin which really delivers the goods.

Now the bottle is empty. Such is the way of gin.

Finsbury Gin

When I bought my bottle of Oxley gin, I also bought a bottle of Finsbury London Dry Gin – well, it was on offer and it isn’t exactly expensive to start with.

The bottle is almost like a massive hip-flask; shallow from front-to-back and quite wide. With a yellow label slightly reminiscent of a Boddingtons badge (okay – its a slight stretch) it is certainly a bright and cheerful bottle.

It comes with a metal screw-cap and, like many gin bottles, has a nice heavy base.

Finsbury is a gin of mystery; it hasn’t a website and finding a list of botanicals that is more expansive than “secret recipe” is difficult. In fact, finding out anything about this gin, other than its price, is difficult in the extreme.

The aroma of Finsbury gin is fairly true to the London Dry style.

Sampled neat, Finsbury Gin is quite a sweet, juniper-lead gin with coriander shining to the fore. There is a lingering aftertaste that has echoes of play-doh. All-in-all though, it is fairly mediocre.

Mediocrity aside, Finsbury Gin is another story in a gin and tonic. With Fever-Tree tonic water it makes a very clean, fresh and simple gin and tonic. It has a pleasing bite and the juniper is not only at the core of this G&T, it gives it a very study backbone indeed.

This isn’t the best of the low-price-bracket gins, but it is far from the worst.

Image courtesy of Justus Bluemer on Flickr, under the Creative Commons License.

I have tried some brilliant gins recently and all the while, at the back of my mind, I have had this nagging thought that I should be trying some of the lesser known and more budget gins.

In a stroke of serendipitous timing, an opportunity presented itself recently when a fellow gin enthusiast asked if I would like a bottle of Ginebra San Miguel. “San Miguel do a gin?!”, I asked incredulously; apparently so – gin from the Philippines. I was a little trepid, but graciously accepted the kind offer.

Looking at the San Miguel website is an interesting experience. There is almost no information about this gin other than it being a “Dutch-type gin“, it’s “80-proof“, that it is “produced from selected spirits and botanical extracts” and the “predominant flavor comes from juniper berries“.

The site also makes the rather bold claim that Ginebra San Miguel is “acknowledged as the world’s number one gin” and “currently the largest-selling gin and the third largest distilled spirit in the world“.

Could this be a hidden gem of the Philippines?

Ginebra San Miguel

The box arrived in the post and I took it home, along with a bottle of Oxley I ordered previously. The bottle was textured – little beaded lumps – and the colourful label, which insisted that is was for domestic sale only, was stuck-on wonky; good start.

Opening the bottle and giving it a good sniff sent my nose reeling; the aroma was of vodka with faint wafts of surgical spirit and methylated spirits. Acetone was also a contributing scent. Worryingly, there wasn’t the slightest hint of juniper.

Sampling neat translated all of the aromas of the aforementioned solvents into taste form. There was an underlying sweetness and a hint of juniper, but there was also a chemical twang that was hard to pin down – it reminded me of my days in the organic chemistry labs though. There is something hiding in all of this which might be considered citrus, lemon probably, but I wouldn’t like to say for sure.

Adding water didn’t help.

Adding tonic water drove off lots of solvent smells but it did help me pin-down that elusive taste, as it came off with the effervescence of the tonic – it was a ketone used in a type of glue used for sticking fletchings to arrows. Fancy that, another solvent. A little research reveals this to be methyl ethyl ketone (AKA: Butanone).

The G&T, with and without lime, and at varying concentrations was simply solvent-heavy tonic water. It is in no way pleasant and leaves me with the presentiment of a tragic hangover and a rather acrid chemical aftertaste.

I dread to think what a martini made with Ginebra San Miguel would taste like.

Maybe the kind soul that sent me this is actually trying to kill me by calling a lethal chemical concoction gin and posting it to me. I sincerely doubt it, but just to be sure, I have drafted a letter to be held by my solicitor and released in the case of my untimely demise with full details of who and how.

In some ways, I am grateful; this has given me a whole new perspective on gin. I may be slightly derisive of Gordon’s and Bombay Sapphire but Ginebra San Miguel has put it all into context. This gin is so bad, it will haunt my dreams.

I wonder if it cleans brass?

I first came across Oxley in Heathrow airport in September 2009. It was just launching in the UK and the first place it was available was Heathrow Terminal 3. I was about to embark on a business trip to Abu Dhabi and spent a good two or three hours milling around the terminal waiting for the flight. I was travelling with a colleague (the marvellous chap who introduced me to gin in the first place) and he practically dragged me to the Oxley stand demanding I try it.

It was being served neat to anyone wanting some and the gentleman serving gave a good spiel about the cold distillation process and how special it was. Trying it, I was blown away but the price-tag was steep. I was also about to enter the UAE and entering the country with a bottle of gin in my hand-luggage was a bit risky. Then we noticed that each bottle was numbered; my colleague found bottle number 69, much to his delight, and I found 75 (the year of my birth) – how could we resist? We bought a bottle each and ran the gauntlet of UAE customs, which wasn’t as bad as we thought – although it is illegal to buy booze in Abu Dhabi without a license, they actually sell the stuff in the arrivals terminal, and you are allowed to bring up to four “items” of alcohol into the Emirate.

Oxley Gin

I still have that bottle; I can’t bring myself to open the 75th production bottle of Oxley gin. They only produce 240 bottles per day, so this would have been made during the first day of commercial production. It will probably never be worth more than a normal bottle, but it is special in my mind.

Every now and then, I eye-up that bottle and ponder if I can bring myself to open it. To avoid temptation I treated myself last week and bought a bottle to drink. Happiness is owning two bottles of Oxley.

Anyway, boring anecdote aside, you are here for the gin, so let’s get on with it.

At anywhere north of £45 a bottle, this is a tremendously expensive gin. Saying that, it is a 1 litre bottle, so on the 75cl, it is comparable in price to something like No.3 Gin. So, a top-tier premium gin, but not beyond anything else on the market.

The bottle is something to behold. Its bottom is cradled in a galvanised tin cup. The stopper is a wooden-topped cork (well, plastic cork – a little soulless, but far better than foil). The top of the bottle is bound in a length of green round leather cord; attached to this is tab of green leather, embossed with the brand and the words “Dry Gin”. The label is simple but very elegant.

Oxley gin is cold distilled at low pressure. When I say old, I mean cold; the macerated botanicals and spirit is distilled at -5^oc – the vapours are then chilled to -100^oc in order to get them to condense back into liquid form. This preserves the flavour of the fresh citrus peels that are used and keeps the juniper soft, generating less of the harsh pine notes that many people don’t like in gin.

As mentioned above, this process results in a production of only 240 bottles per day. Estimates place production at only 4000 to 5000 cases per year.

The botanical list isn’t easy to piece together, but of the 14, I have managed to put together the following 12…

• Juniper Berries
• Orange Peel
• Lemon Peel
• Grapefruit Peel
• Orris Root
• Liquorice Root
• Cassia Bark
• Nutmeg
• Cocoa
• Vanilla Beans
• Grains of Paradise
• Meadowsweet

Coriander Seed and Angelica Root are conspicuous by their absence, but the website mentions aniseed tastes, which suggests Star Anise. Cocoa is an unusual botanical for a gin and meadowsweet apparently works very well with the cold distillation process, lending the finished gin an almond flavour.

Uncorking was a little disappointing; plastic doesn’t squeak like cork, and the pop was more of a “phut”. Nevertheless, the wide-bore cork and metal-embossed wooden top was a pleasure to remove. Later, as more space was created in the bottle, the “pop” did develop, but it does seem that plastic corks don’t squeak.

The scent from the bottle-neck was of a quite citrus-led gin with a sound backing of juniper.

Trying Oxley neat is a privilege; its juniper contribution is solid but subtle at the same time. It’s like the juniper flavours build like any normal juniper-heavy gin, but fail to build all the way into that nose-resident pine tang; instead they remain rounded and warming. The spices and roots used add to this warm rounded mouth-feel and the citrus gives it a pleasing bite. Given that this is 47% ABV, the alcohol taste is well-restrained and compliments the tingle of the citrus very well. Similarly, the sweetness is also well-restrained and Oxley is a properly dry gin.

The suggested method of drinking it neat with a grapefruit zest twist was a step too far on the citrus-front for my tastes, but it works tremendously well with just two or three drops of cardamom bitters; it takes the warming spice of Oxley to a whole new level.

Overall, Oxley is a bright, clean gin that stands fabulously alone. The serving suggestion of drinking from a balloon glass works well to capture the rich aromas of this gin and really adds to the drinking experience.

In a gin & tonic, Oxley works very well and is absolutely spectacular with stronger mixing ratios. The rounded and balanced flavours hold their own against a tonic like Fever-Tree. Its tremendously crisp, clear and bright, but like No.3, it’s so good on its own, it’s almost a sacrilege to mix it with anything.

I also tried it with Fever-Tree Mediterranean Tonic Water, a wedge of lime and a dash of cardamom bitters and the resulting G&T was a roller-coaster assault of spice, floral and citrus notes; very nice, but so far removed from the original gin as to be almost a shame to mix.

Oxley gin also makes a fine, fine dry martini. I preferred it without any sort of garnish and very little vermouth.

So, is Oxley worth the price-tag? Most certainly, but it shouldn’t be squandered. I have experimented with about 25% of my open bottle and while there is an endless barrage of possibilities for that remaining 75%, I think I will be reserving it for sipping neat and little else.

When I was at university, the word “sloane” was a derogatory term for students from a privileged upbringing; where many of us were struggling to survive after drinking our student grants, a sloane would be driving around in their brand-new VW Polo and pondering which cocktail bar to paint red that night.

Anyway, irrelevant distractions about the prejudices of my student years aside, last week, I was contacted by people representing Sloane’s Gin. After a short and exciting conversation (well, exciting for me at least) a bottle of this curiously-named spirit was on its way in the post. As usual, the fact this is a gift will not influence my notes in any way.

Sloane's Gin

Sloane’s gin had popped-up on my radar fairly recently; in March, it won the Best in Show Unaged White Spirit and Best Gin awards at the 2011 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. It also recently appeared on the shelves on Sainsbury’s supermarkets across the UK – not bad for a new-to-market gin.

The gin is named after Sir Hans Sloane, a physician, scientist and avid collector who died in the 18th century; in his lifetime, he amassed a truly astounding collection, including plants, animals, antiquities and coins. Upon his death, he bequeathed this collection to the British nation and this formed the basis of the founding collection of the Bristish Museum. Large parts of the collection now reside at the Natural History Museum. Sloane is also credited with the invention of chocolate milk or drinking chocolate, adapting the Jamaican water-based recipe in order to make is less “nauseating”.

Anyway, enough of dead 18th Century scientists, back to the gin.

Sloane’s gin is produced by Dutch distillery Toorank, producer of a wealth of award-winning spirits and liqueurs. The individual botanicals are steeped in spirit for 24 hours before being distilled separately and then blended to make the finished product. This blend is the left to “rest” for at least a month to facilitate marrying of the flavours. Those botanicals are listed on the bottle in a little band around the bottom of the label; these are…

• Juniper
• Angelica
• Orris Root
• Coriander Seeds
• Vanilla Pod
• Cardamom Pods
• Liquorice Root
• Orange
• Lemon

The citrus used is fresh whole fruit rather than dried peel and seems to be a slowly increasing trend in the world of quality new gins. Sacred and Leopold’s both use fresh fruit and Oxley uses fresh peel rather than dried.

The bottle is a curious shape; from the top, the bottle shoulders are round, but the sides both narrow and flare in different axes to an oval base. The result is a good fit in the hand.

The bottle-cap is metal foil, which is a bit of a let-down for a premium gin if I am honest, but while presentation counts for something, what counts is in the bottle.

The scent from the bottle-top is unmistakably gin, with a soft, sweet creaminess to it. The alcohol harshness is kept to a minimum.

Tasted neat, Sloane’s Gin is faithful to the smell with a creamy sweetness backing a good solid London Dry taste, so much so, that there are slight hints of cream soda lurking. It’s juniper-load is fairly middle-weight, with less pine notes than something like Sipsmith or Brecon Gin. It is a very well-balanced gin with the citrus and spice being quite subtle and light; if anything, it is the sweet, earthy roots that dominate. Sloane’s is very smooth though and stands well alone; rounded and gentle.

In a G&T (with Fever-Tree tonic and a wedge of lime) it is very serviceable, but a lot of the delicate notes are lost to the tonic. Trying it at a higher ratio of gin to tonic than my usual 1:4 works very well, with the gin taking a more dominant position in the finished drink. Fever-Tree Naturally Light Tonic Water works quite well too, being less overpowering than its full-fat cousin.

I think on the balance of things, Sloane’s Gin will make a great starting point for people looking to move away from vodka-gins like Bombay Sapphire and experiment with premium gins. It is a far-cry from the monsters of juniper like No. 3, but is it still a very high-quality unintimidating gin.

Sipsmith is still the G&T king in my book, but with Sloane’s being available in Sainsbury’s and at £23 a bottle, it is a few quid cheaper and easier to get hold of. This is certainly not going to be the last bottle of Sloane’s Gin I will drink.

A few months ago, on a night out with friends in London, I came across Seagrams Extra Dry Gin. We found a bar with half a dozen gins and the Seagrams was one of them; after a couple of distinctly lack-lustre G&Ts we tried it and were blown away.

I try not to judge a gin after a night out on the town, so I had to get hold of a bottle to try in the comfort of my own home.

Seagrams Extra Dry Gin

Seagrams is the top selling gin in the USA and while this gives it some credence, Gordon’s is the top-seller in the UK and this left me a little underwhelmed.

Seagrams gin is distilled using a ‘unique’ low temperature vacuum distillation process; details of this are scant and the word ‘unique’ is likely a matter of perspective (Oxley and Sacred spring readily to mind). It is also aged, or rested, for three months in charred oak barrels, which gives it its faint straw-yellow colour and mellows the flavours somewhat.

The botanicals listed on the Seagrams site we are…

• Juniper
• Cardamom
• Cassia
• Orange
• Coriander
• Angelica Root

The bottle is rather unique in that it is covered in little lumps and bobbles and the sides are indented, giving it a good grip in the hand. The cap is a metal screw-cap, but for the price, you can’t have it all.

At around £15 per bottle, this is a reasonably-priced gin and I understand it is cheaper still in the US.

Opening the bottle and giving it a sniff reveals all the right smells, but it lacks character; there is juniper at the fore, but only just.

Sampled neat, and with a dash of water, Seagrams is fairly smooth but it lacks spice. There are plenty of sweet, earthy elements from the angelica root and a faint tingle of citrus to back the juniper, but to my mind, it needs more spice. There is a sweet-creaminess to this gin that almost borders on coconut. The juniper is to the fore, but not really dominant.

In a G&T, Seagrams is a little lost; it is pleasant enough, but considering that Brecon Gin is only £2 more and makes a much better G&T, I am not sure it is worth it. With a dash of orange and cardamom bitters, it livens the G&T up a lot, but I am looking for something to stand well on its own.

As far as fairly neutral, generic gins are concerned, it is pretty good and will make a good versatile addition to the drinks cupboard; you should be able to mix it with most things and it generate some safe but unexciting results.

This experience is a far cry from how I remember it that night out in London, and this is why I like to quaff and review in the comfort of home. It could be that Seagrams works very well with Schweppes tonic water, which the pub had and I didn’t, it could just be that we were approaching a level of inebriation that makes anything seem rather appealing.

As for why it is the best-selling gin in the US, it is cheap and isn’t bad. I would be happy to see this as a house gin in the UK rather than Gordon’s. Beefeater probably has the edge though.

I have had my eye on No.3 Gin for some time. It certainly talks the talk in all of the associated literature and has the price-tag of a top-tier premium gin, so it should be something special. The fact that it costs just north of thirty quid and that it is hard for find outside London has relegated this to my “must try at some point” list rather than the “rush out and buy it next” list. Imagine my delight when I was asked if I would like a sample bottle.

No. 3 Gin

Now, as with my Sipsmith review, the fact the someone has sent me this free of charge, will only guarantee one this; that I drink it. My opinion will not be swayed by generosity; objectivity will still reign in my house.

No.3 is almost as defined by the number three as Caoruun is by the number five. Three is the number of the building on St James’s Street that Berry Bros. & Rudd occupy, the number three is emblazoned three times on the front of the bottle, three is the number of spice botanicals in the gin and three is the number of fruit botanicals. You get the gist.

Speaking of which, the botanicals are…

• Juniper berries
• Orange peel
• Grapefruit peel
• Angelica root
• Coriander seed
• Cardamom pods

Berry Bros. & Rudd asked one Dr David Clutton, as well as a panel of gin specialists and mixologists, to help in creating a gin that is that last word for a dry martini. Dr Clutton has over 40 years in the spirits trade and holds the world’s first PhD on Gin Flavour – this man is a doctor of gin!

Anyway, exciting fields of science aside, the result of a year’s labour was No.3 gin.

Now, I am a sucker for packaging. There is something of a ritual about opening a new gin and flimsy metal caps and boring labels just don’t cut it for me. The more attention to detail that goes into the bottle and its dressings, the more pleasure I derive from opening and pouring the contents. No.3 certainly didn’t disappoint on this front.

Firstly, it comes with a book. Not a little four-page postage-stamp-sized pamphlet affixed to the neck of the bottle with elastic, but an A6 book printed on thick, high-GSM paper. It runs to 26 pages and it provides information on the gin, Berry Bros. & Rudd, the symbology used on the label and a few cocktail recipes. This is a nice little keep-sake unto itself and I haven’t even got to the bottle yet.

The bottle is held in a very understated white card box that is green inside. There is a little keyhole cut into the front face, through which I can see white paper with green lettering on (a motif that is mirrored on the front of that little book). Opening the box reveals a bottle which has been hand-wrapped in a large leaf of white paper, on which is printed a replica of an old street map depicting the area around St James’s Street. Only once this is removed do I get to the bottle.

The bottle is more olive-green than bottle-green and is square, tapering from a broad shoulder to a narrow base. The front and back of the bottle are flat and the sides are slightly concave; easy to hold and pour as well as aesthetically pleasing. The cork stopper is sealed in place by a  perforated alloy foil which peels nicely. I was curious as to what this was, but a flame test didn’t show any significant lead content, but it melted very easily, smelling, when it did, a lot like solder.

Uncorking No.3 was a joy – the 22mm stopper came out with a delightful squeak and a high “plop” that I know will deepen as the liquid level goes down.

Smelling the bottle-top, and then some neat gin in a large wine glass, revealed an amazing clarity of juniper. It is fresh and crisp with little to complicate it, but there are subtitles there – it is far from a single-minded juniper approach.

Trying the neat gin was a joy. The clarity of the juniper absolutely follows through into the mouth and only deepens as the coriander develops, followed by the cardamom. The citrus is very well balanced and takes a bit of a back seat to the juniper and spice. There is a slight peppery note in the nose and early stages of the after-taste and the cardamom lingers long after swallowing. It is also incredibly smooth, especially for a gin weighing in at 46% ABV.

I can’t seem to put into words how bright and clear and fresh the juniper is. If you sidled up to an unsuspecting juniper tree and mashed a few needles between forefinger and thumb, the taste of this gin is the first fraction of a second of the smell generated by the damaged needles – that initial burst of scent that quickly diminishes into something a bit more familiar and long-lasting. It is astounding, and it only gets better with the addition of a little water. However, at no point does the juniper overly dominate; it is held high by the supporting botanicals – the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” springs to mind.

I think No.3 is what Oliver Cromwell 1599 is trying to be but fails at dismally. They are both very juniper led, but where Oliver Cromwell is a raw and brutal log of juniper, fashioned, if at all, into a battering ram, No.3 is a similar log carved into a complex, yet pleasing, sculpture of exquisite workmanship. Drinking it neat is almost epiphanic.

No.3 in a G&T is quite spectacular, but not as good as I imagined. While this may be the best G&T I have had (I foresee another gin-off coming) it doesn’t stand head and shoulders above other G&Ts like it does neat; maybe standing a clear forehead above its peers. The tonic water almost muffled No.3′s clarity of flavour and while the juniper and cardamom still shine through beautifully, it is not as bright and blinding as the raw spirit is. I am left wishing that I had tried these in the opposite order so my amazement of the neat gin didn’t inflate my expectations of the G&T. After finishing it, I had another glass of No.3 on the rocks.

The stated aim of No.3 was to produce the last word in gin for a martini, so I absolutely need to do a martini tasting. I don’t have any vermouth in at the moment though, but by Friday night, I should have a bottle of Lillet Blanc in my grubby mitts; I really enjoyed this in the 24 Martini I had last week and it was a toss-up between this and Noilly Pratt (I won’t drink it fast enough to justify buying both). I can imagine No. 3 making a truly spectacular martini – watch this space.

At over £30 a bottle this isn’t cheap gin, but anyone who appreciates gin in its less diluted forms should absolutely love No.3. Splash out and try it; drink it slower if price is an issue, get it in for Christmas or other special occasion, drop hints in the run-up to your birthday, sell some junk on ebay to raise the cash, just get some. Is it worth that 30-odd quid? Absolutely.