Serious botanicals

Visitor centres, craft distilleries – gin is upping its game globally. Lucy Britner watches the spirit get down to business

Gin’s getting serious. For a while it was the preserve of the pinky-ringed business boys and their once-a-week housewives. Then it was embraced by the bar community. And now? Well now it’s everywhere.

‘Flavoured’ gins are popping up all over the place and will no doubt come and go in much the same way as flavoured vodka trends. But the trend for stronger gins – in both juniper and abv – is a bit more serious. 

Earlier this year, Sipsmith launched VJOP. Very Junipery Over Proof is described as the ‘ultimate celebration of juniper’. The gin is based on Sipsmith’s London Dry Gin and master distiller Jared Brown has tweaked the proportion of juniper in the recipe and added it at three different stages.

Firstly the original recipe has seen an increase in the proportion of juniper and, after a three-day maceration period in copper pot stills, more juniper is added. Finally, vapour-infused juniper is added via the carter head.      

Sam Galsworthy, Sipsmith co-founder, says: “Imagining the botanicals as components in an orchestra, here we have taken the lead instrument and amplified its presence in the ensemble, and then raised the decibels by increasing the proof alcohol. The result is a special juniper-forward gin.”   

Sipsmith VJOP is 57.7% abv and it has an rrp of £37.95 per 70cl bottle.

Miranda Hayman, director at Hayman’s, says there have been several juniper-heavy and higher-abv gin launches recently in response to the current gin renaissance. “Providing a point of difference or line extension is just another way of maintaining consumer interest and responding to consumers’ increasingly discerning palates.” 

In terms of higher abv gin launches, she says this also correlates to the current cocktail trend: “Many bartenders like to use higher abv gins within cocktails to add a greater depth of flavour.”

The company repackaged its own Navy Strength gin late last year, readying it for world domination – well, substantial rollout at least. 

Royal Dock Navy Strength Gin hit the US first, in 2012, followed by the UK and Europe. 

Hayman says the gin “fares particularly well in Germany where bartenders like their gin to be a minimum of 47% abv within cocktails, due to their specific taste preference.”

Interestingly, Beefeater in the US is 47% and has been for many years, so it seems historic taste preference and not just cocktail culture dictates.

When it comes to higher abvs, Beefeater’s master distiller Desmond Payne puts it simply: “Alcohol is important in alcoholic drinks. It carries aromas and flavours and a higher abv does tend to hold on to flavour.” Though we all agree there’s a limit. 

Payne, who has 47 in common with his gin – he is in his 47th year in the industry – has seen trends and brands come and go. “The thing I’ve noticed is that 10 years ago, near enough all gins were 40% abv. Now, some gins are using abvs as a point of difference – an abv unique to their brand.”

Sticking to 40% abv but playing on the juniper character, Two Birds launched a cocktail gin with a “more intense juniper flavour” at the end of 2013. 

Mark Gamble – who has an engineering background and built his copper still ‘Gerard’ from scratch – says: “Being independent craft distillers, we have the flexibility to experiment with new products and different flavour profiles as well as alcohol levels.”

But Gamble feels the gap was for stronger juniper, rather than stronger abv. “After discussions with friends working in the drinks industry we saw there was a gap in the market for a stronger gin but not at an overproof level. So we set about creating the perfect gin for cocktails; using exactly the same botanicals used in our London Dry gin but altering our distilling profile to bring out the individual flavours. We believe that the Two Birds Cocktail makes for a strong juniper-led London Dry style gin while still at a moderate 40% abv.”

Both higher abv and more intense juniper seem to be geared towards cocktail culture. Ian Hart from Sacred Distillery in Highgate says: “Martini dilution is important to consider. If you don’t pour your Martini straight from the freezer, like at The Duke’s Hotel, higher abvs help avoid too much dilution.”

Sacred has launched a range of what Hart calls ‘botanically-focused’ gins. This is an interesting term and one that makes more sense than ‘flavoured gins’ for this particular type of tipple. Sacred’s regular gin contains 12 botanicals and the six botanically focused blends contain all the regular botanicals, but the headline ingredient – for example cardamom – is dialled up to about 90%.

Parts of Hart’s family home and garden in Hampstead are dedicated to his and his partner Hilary Whitney’s gin business and in the room where his boyhood chemistry set was once a feature, there is now a larger, altogether more grown-up chemistry set in the form of a vacuum still. 

Glasses, pipes, taps and tubes exist in a set-up that has taken Hart five years to perfect, though it’s still evolving, he adds. Large white tubs of various macerations lay around the place and Hart tells me he spent hours preparing 330 pink grapefruits for his pink grapefruit maceration ahead of the botanically-focused gin. 

Hart describes the plethora of new distillers as a ‘groundswell’. “It’s great for the industry.” 

Five years is a long time to work on a project in your own living room. The Oxley vacuum still took eight years to perfect - and that was with the backing of Bacardi. Although Hart isn’t backed by a global drinks giant, he does have the support of his partner and co-founder of the business, Whitney.

When it comes to botanicals, Sacred is organic and although that means paying a premium, Hart decided on the direction “because we use a lot of peel and pesticides are sprayed on the peel”. Makes sense. The gin is in 14 markets and growth is up 5,000 bottles to 23,000 in 2013. 

Still in London, Jake Burger and Ged Feltham’s Portobello Road gin, which is distilled at Thames Distillers, is enjoying much larger volumes, springing from 15,000 bottles in year one to 60,000 in year two. 

Burger’s gin comes in at 42% and he says of Sipsmith’s VJOP launch: “I saw it and I thought ‘that’s a great idea’.”

Burger and Feltham are currently working on a number of new ideas, though they’re not ready to give anything away just yet. When it comes to new gin trends, Burger points to the US. “America is slightly ahead of us in terms of craft distillation,” he says. “People there are starting to talk about different spirit bases.”

Like all drinks, not all new creations and recreations come up good and Burger also warns that the “moonshine style of gin died out for a good reason”. We tasted one at his Ginstitute above the Portobello Star bar in Notting Hill.
Sickly sweet. 

Some new creations are ticking all the boxes. At the end of February, UK-based drinks company Master of Malt started importing and marketing a gin from St George spirits in California. St George Dry Rye gin is a rye-based gin and guess what? It claims to have 50% more juniper than the distillery’s other gins. Oh, and it weighs in at 45%abv. 

See? Serious stuff. 

Visitor centres

Abvs and juniper content aren’t the only things getting serious. So is the amount of cash being invested by the drinks groups in state-of-the-art visitor centres. Bacardi’s Bombay Sapphire is set to open its Laverstoke Mill site in the UK county of Hampshire, which is not only home to the Bombay Sapphire distillery but also a magnificent spectacle of a visitor centre with all sorts of information and examples of botanicals. 

Meanwhile in London, Beefeater is poised to go large down in Kennington. The iconic – yes, iconic – brand is set to get a visitor centre to live up to its iconic brand status. 

These two openings will no doubt be among the biggest stories in gin this year and there is much talk and speculation in the trade. Frustratingly neither are quite ready for action and not even the promise of me in a hard hat and high vis jacket granted access. 

Beefeater was originally supposed to be ready for sippers and snoopers late last year and JC Iglesias, who is now seven months in the top job as brand director, could only be drawn to give one answer – it will open this year. 

Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the history of gin through ‘interactive showcases’ and ‘see, touch and smell botanicals’ used in production. There will also be a chance to witness distillation.

Over at Laverstoke Mill, Bombay Sapphire estate manager Will Brix says the £multi-million project is set to open its doors “later this year”. 

The company decided now was the right time to invest following brand growth and it expects to bolster that with an estimated 100,000 distillery visitors a year.

From Brix’s description, you can see why there’s no exact date: “As you’d expect it’s an incredibly complex project renovating buildings dating back as far as the 1700s. 

“We are very aware of the heritage of the site and want to make sure that we maintain its rich history, while creating a world-class distillery that we and the local residents can be proud of. 

“The distillery is situated in a Site of Special Scientific Interest so the refurbishment is being completed with the utmost care.”

Brix says some steps have taken longer than planned but as far as making gin goes, it’s business as usual. 

Although we were unable to get a sneak preview, there are plenty of artists’ impressions for you to feast your eyes on.