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FINNIES THE JEWELLER
TIMELESS
LONDON OR WHAT?
The idea that gin can be divided into craft gin and mass-produced gin is a fallacy. Whether you’re making two cases of gin a week or 2,000, production is exactly the same – neutral spirit is re-distilled together with a range of botanical ingredients such as natural berries, seeds, barks and spices, with juniper predominant.
Most bottles of decent quality gin will bear two signifiers on their labels – ‘London Dry’ and ‘Distilled Gin’. These cause immense confusion as many people think that London Dry means the gin is made in London. Not so. The description came about because, when gin evolved from cheap rotgut to an elegant spirit in the 1850s, many of the distillers making
the new, non-sweetened (aka dry) gin were based in London. London Dry described a style of gin then, and it still does.
To qualify as a London Dry Gin, according to EU law, ethyl alcohol of specified quality must be distilled in a traditional still with the botanicals. The flavourings used must be natural, no flavourings or colour can
be added after distillation and the only additions allowed are further spirit, a small amount of sweetening and water to reduce the gin to its bottling strength. Most of the classic gins, like Beefeater, are made this way.
‘Distilled Gin’ is slightly different in that it may refer to a gin that is distilled in the traditional way and
be a London Dry style too. Or the gin might be a new-style gin, such as Hendrick’s or Martin Miller’s, where flavourings are added after distillation,
in which case the label won’t say ‘London Dry’. That’s not to say it’s of inferior quality. Sometimes particular flavours, cucumber for example, can only be added after distillation for technical reasons.
As a bit of a gin purist I always look for another clue: the wording ‘100% grain spirit’. In theory,
the neutral base alcohol in gin can be made from
a variety of substances and today there are gins
that use potatoes, apples or grapes. Traditionally, however, gin’s heart has always been a high quality neutral grain spirit, and I’m afraid I can usually spot when it’s something else.
case of London-based Sipsmith, a once-niche small brand, a £50 million buyout. The cocktail revival of the 1990s inspired hip bartenders to revisit gin. Bartenders love gin because of its mixability and the fact that most of the world’s great cocktails, such as the Dry Martini and the White Lady, were invented with gin in mind. Properly made, classic cocktails are now a big thing for a whole new generation and even that old stalwart the G and T has had a makeover, with hundreds of different gin, tonic water and garnish combos on offer.
On a practical level, gin is a relatively easy spirit to produce. It does not require ageing, so the entry barriers to setting up a small distillery are low. Once the stills have been acquired and the recipe developed, you can start distilling. And a week after that you can be selling your product in all kinds of new ways – online, at farmers’ markets or at food and drink festivals. Scottish distillers who already have traditional stills and vast experience have not been slow to see this and gins like Caorunn from Speyside and The Botanist from Islay are big hits amongst the gin cognoscenti.
THE MANY FACES OF GIN-MAKING: above
left, raw organic juniper berries; above clockwise from top left, stills at the Kyoto Distillery, Japan’s first dedicated artisanal gin distillery; Desmond Payne, Beefeater’s master distiller; processing of The Botanist, the first dry gin from
the island of Islay; right, botanicals are hand-picked and sorted at Caorunn
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