Some More Words on Gin

By Kara Mae Adamo.

So, in my last post I skimmed over the history of gin and tied it up gratuitously by mentioning my two favorites of the year.

What I didn’t do was get into any of the styles of gin or the fun cocktails you can make with it. The original draft included plenty of this information, but it ended up being a long and rather disorganized post, so in the interest of brevity (shout-out to Billy Shakespeare), I decided to cut up the rambling and post it in sections.

For this one, we’re going to look at gin styles and, of course, end the thing with a fun cocktail you can make pretty easily in your own home or behind the bar.

I feel like that’s more fun, anyway.

SO, onward: Styles of Gin

How many are there, you ask?

As with most boozy questions, the answer depends on who you’re talking to.

In Europe, where gin comes from originally, they recognize 4 styles, but in the US and Canada, they can split off into as many as 8 different categories, 5 of which are considered “official.”

Because I’m from the US, we’re going to annoy everyone on the other side of the pond by talking about all 8.

Again, to avoid long, rambling posts, let’s talk about the first four here:

• London Dry
• Plymouth
• New Wave
• Navy Strength

For the next blog, I’ll write about the last four:

• Genever
• Old Tom
• Flavored Gin
• Grape-Based Gin

LONDON DRY

Alright, so let’s start with the first gin many people think of: London Dry. This one is very juniper-forward in character. You’ll see a lot of famous gins in this category: Avaition, Bombay, Beefeater, Hendricks, Tanqueray, The Botonist, etc.

Contrary to popular belief, in order to be a London Dry gin, it does not have to be distilled in London. Hendricks, for instance, is a London Dry but it’s actually Dutch. London Dry gins do have to be distilled in copper pots and they have to run at at least 70-proof, or 35% alcohol.

It’s a dry gin (of course) and most of what you’re going to get off of it are citrus notes with a ton  of juniper. London Dry is the type of gin most used in martinis, although a good Cucumber Smash using Hendricks is always a welcome sight. Hendricks, in particular, uses cucumber and rose water in their blends so muddling a little cucumber with lime and simple syrup and then shaking it with about 2 ounces of Hendricks and topping it with club soda is the best thing since, well, gin.

PLYMOUTH

So this one is similar to London Dry, but you’ll catch a little spice and sweetness here where you won’t in the aforementioned category. Plymouth gins also belong to that elitist group of alcohols where you can’t call it Plymouth unless it’s actually made in Plymouth (like Champagne, Amarone, Scotch, and–back in the day, though not currently–Bourbon). So, the English pretty much have a monopoly on this category. In fact, only one company makes it and it’s called–you guessed it–Plymouth. That’s probably why Europeans don’t count this category, but this gin doesn’t fit into any of the other styles, so in the States we tend to put it into its own little section.

Plymouth gin works really well in gin and tonics. There are quite a few tonics out on the market, but my particular favorites are Fever Tree and Q. Q is cool in general because all of their stuff is made with organic ingredients and they tend to add some random stuff in there that you don’t expect (their gingerale, for instance, is less sweet, made with agave, and has chile pepper and cardemom in it). Careful opening a bottle of Q tonic, though. It sprays everywhere for some reason, though none of their other products seem to have that issue. Weird, but worth it.

NAVY STRENGTH

So now we have Navy Strength Gin.

This is a fun one. Think of a traditional London Dry and then add a punch in the mouth and you basically have Navy Strength gin.

The story goes that, on naval ships, gun powder used to be stored along with bottles of gin. That way, if water got in and soaked the gun powder, the sailors could pour the alcohol onto it and it would light anyway. It’s that damn powerful. We’re talking 10-15% more alcoholic than your average gin, which is already no joke. The gunpowder only lit if the gin was 114-proof, which means a whopping 57% ABV, which is just nuts.

Gin wasn’t even allowed on board unless the gunpowder lit. This little test was eventually called the Proof Test, which is where the “Proof of Alcohol” was first coined. In the US, a liquor’s ABV is exactly one half of the proof. So, if something is 80-proof, then there is 40% alcohol. In the UK, the calculation is a little different, but the concept is still the same: 70-proof alcohol over there is 40% abv.

It was also a great excuse for officers of the British navy to store gin on the ships, even though rum was universally consumed among the enlisted. I can’t help but think that that might be where gin started to seem sort of snooty comparatively which, in honesty, I do sort of enjoy.

They finally abolished the practice of lighting gun powder with gin and allowing for liquor rations in the 1970s–total buzz-kill–but in New Zealand they were still factoring it into the budget in the 1990s, which I find hilarious.

Mix this one with something potent. I like Aperol negronis, personally. It’s equal parts gin, Campari (or, as I said, Aperol), and sweet vermouth in a double rocks glass with an ice sphere or large cube. Express and garnish an orange peel onto this beast and you’ve got one potent but delicious cocktail on your hands.

The Negroni originally came from Caffe Casoni in Florence. Back in 1919, Count Camillo Negroni supposedly asked his favorite bartender–a guy named Scarselli–to replace the soda water in his Americano cocktail with gin and, thus, the Negroni came to be. Cocktail Family Alert: you can make an identical drink but switch out the gin with either rye or bourbon and it turns into a French cocktail called the Boulevardier, which is named after a monthly magazine that was popular in Paris from the late 1920s to early 1930s. The American founder of The Boulevardier, Vanderbilt descendant Erskine Gwynne, first created the concoction on one of his trips to Europe, probably after coming across the Negroni.

NEW WAVE

So, New Wave is an interesting one because it doesn’t really fit into the traditional brackets, but some traditional gins fit into it. A good example of this is Hendricks, which is a London Dry but focuses more on cucumber than on juniper. Generally, boutique gins like Bluecoat or Barr Hill fall into this category because they have a special emphasis on citrus notes or, as in the case of the former, honey.

Basically, plenty of gins that belong in other categories can also belong in the “New Wave” category. Floral or citrus notes are all that really qualify for this one and there aren’t any legal requirements in place to give it structure. New Wave sort of has a Buddhism vibe in that many things can be New Wave but they can follow other paths (or styles) to get there.

Groovy.

One particularly interesting gin of the New Wave persuasion is Empire Spirits’ Smoked Gin, which pushes the boundaries in ways I’ve frankly never seen before. They start with a standard London Dry (you might catch an ongoing theme here) and then infuse it with applewood smoke and Szechuan peppercorns. The Smoked Gin kind of does for gin what Mexcal has been doing for Tequila which is just straight-up fun. The creator of this smokey enigma says to sub-out the whiskey in a traditional Manhattan for a unique spin on the classic drink.

So there you have it: the first four of the eight popular gin styles.

Happy drinking, folks.

Until next time,

Cheers.

Kara Adamo is a bartender, booze nerd, and booze writer. She is the author of Fancy Grape Juice: De-Snootifying the World’s Snootiest Beverage; Artimals: Coloring the Whimsical Wild; and Brews & Hues: A Coloring Book About Beer. Adamo currently lives in Washington DC.