Hello, Mixology Mondayer-ers! My fine and esteemed friend Jay, at Oh Gosh, is hosting this month with a broad topic much-beloved by me, Gin. Instead of posting yet another gin recipe to which I’ve applied my addled expert palate (because you’ll get plenty of those visiting here with any regularity) I’ve decided to whip up another ‘Fight Night’ involving premium gins; where I blindly purchase and try many overpriced gins so, hopefully, you won’t have to without being at least somewhat informed.

In honor of Jay I considered featuring gins exclusively from the U.K. but since I’ve covered many fine samples already I found myself staring at three bottles from the United States’ West Coast. The two from Oregon include Desert Juniper Gin from Bend Distillery in Bend, Oregon and Rogue Spruce Gin from the Rogue Distillery in the coastal area of Newport, Oregon. I also invited a guest from the south (San Francisco, California) in the guise of No. 209 Gin, the sole product of 209 Distillery (so far as I can tell). In these gins we’ll see how gins influenced by readily-available ingredients in the US compare to more traditional London Dry gins and/or bring their own character to the game. Not surprisingly, I’m consistently finding that there is a higher degree of variation between American hand-crafted gins than between London Dry-style gins from overseas, even when an ‘innovative’ product such as Tanqueray Rangpur is introduced it has more similarity to competing London gins than these American small-batch gins to which I’ve recently exposed myself (not like that, you pervs).

I decided to follow the same review, tasting, and testing process I did in Vol. II, evaluating the gins based on ‘cupping’, a neat tasting, and a mixed drink. The mixed drink we used was, once again, the Gin & Tonic with White Rock tonic water (fairly high on quinine and low on the sugar, giving it a more tart and bitter character than most grocery store tonics). I’ve kept with the G&T because I’ve been drinking the hell out of them recently and so I’m very familiar with how different gins affect the character of it as 1: I always make them myself and I always measure, 2: I’ve rotated about 4-5 gins on a regular basis, even within the same night, and 3: I know I’ll be able to finish whatever I mix. All three of these gins are high-quality and you can tell they’re trying to justify their price tag, but one falls just short of being worthy of regularly stocking on my shelf. Let’s find out which, and why… Read More »

I wanted to wait until I had the right collection and mix of domestic, international, and non-London Dry gins together before I did my next piece in this series. To view the first Premium Gin ‘Fight Night’ click here, and see how G’Vine, Bombay Sapphire, and Van Gogh measured up against one another. A similar mix of gins to review finds itself in front of us this go around. In Old Raj we have a highly-regarded London Dry gin that puts a twist on the old formula by adding saffron to the mix, giving it a distinctive yellow hue. In Hendrick’s we have a very popular Scottish gin in a simulacrum of an earthenware bottle whose ‘gimmick’ is the inclusion of cucumber in the botanical infusion process. And finally, Leopold’s, a proudly small batch U.S. gin that I knew nothing about upon picking it up. The selection of Leopold’s came down to a choice between Blackwood’s, Leopold’s, and Quintessential and I went with Leopold’s to provide a non-European contender and something in the back of my mind warned me of Quintessential being a marketing job. I have no basis for that, but something just struck me wrong about it. Maybe it will make the next round and prove me decidedly wrong.

I decided to follow the same review, tasting, and testing process I did in Vol. I, evaluating the gins based on ‘cupping’, a neat tasting, and a mixed drink. The wife and I did try the one-to-one water tasting in place of the neat, as Michael Dietsch outlines here, and just found it, well, put simply, watered down. The one-to-one (water:gin) tasting does cut down on the alcohol burn one gets in drinking most gins straight but, for us, at the expense of the brightness of flavor and character a room temperature neat tasting provides. Plus, I sort of want to know how smooth or rough a spirit’s character is on its own. The other thing we changed was the drink in which we tested the gins. In Vol. I we went with a Gin Gin Highball, which was a fine choice, but in this case we went with a classic gin & tonic (2:1 tonic to gin and a hearty squeeze of lime wedge) and a non-premium tonic water that’s a tad drier than most tonics available in your grocery store. Part of the reason for this was that the G&T is a drier drink than the Gin Gin Highball and we thought it would pare down the drink to show off the gins’ essences more. I think we made the right choice, but at least one of these gins doesn’t belong in a Gin and Tonic. Like to know which one? Read on… Read More »

I received my first free product sample as a result of my blog writing yesterday. And, on top of that, I received my first piece of correspondence addressing me as ‘The Cocktail Nerd‘. Heady times indeed! The product I was sent is a newly-developed gin called G’Vine Gin. The tag-line found under the tasting notes card states, ‘If you don’t like traditional gin, you will love G’Vine.’ Fair enough, but for the record, I happen to love traditional gin so I assume I’m free to not love G’Vine. And, as a side note, I wonder at the wisdom of warning almost everyone who does like traditional gin away from their product, because that’s the corrollary to their statement, ‘If you do like traditional gin, this probably isn’t for you.’ But, marketing’s not my game and I know for a fact there are plenty of people who won’t go near a gin bottle; so they may be right.

So, the first question for me, and I took it very seriously, was how to write a fair and complete product review. Now, I don’t consider my palate with any spirit to be sensitive and trained enough to suss out the flavors and bouquet of a gin on its own. Though, if there’s any spirit with which I consider myself versed in and know what I like and to look for, it’s gin, so that’s a start¹ . So: Read More »

1. they also sent Partida Tequila but I’m not a frequent enough Tequila drinker to make a fair judgement, and for that reason, I won’t be writing a full review on it [↩]