Gins and Tonics

28/01/2015

And the winner is...
The best 10 Gins of 2014 by Global Drinks!
Which gin you think was the most sold or the most popular? Do you expect your favourite on the list? Come and find it out!...

Once again at the beginning of the year Global Drinks (http://www.drinksint.com) published the list of the ten Gin Best Seller brands and the 10 most trendy of the last year.

The Best Sellers:

10.- Spring44
A fairly new a young distillery from Colorado with one new gin and two promising projects brewed with ingredients of the Rocky Mountains

9.- Gin Mare
The favourite mediterranean gin with herbal flavours and a sophisticated recipe

8.- Hayman's
A traditional family distillery with a variety of 6 gins made all by traditional british methods in an copper pot

7.- Plymouth
Another british traditional distillery, the favourite of the Royal navy and a newcomer this year to the list

6.- Hendrick's
One of the few repeating on the list but falling one position. The cucumber gin by excelence known world wide by its refreshing taste

5.- Fords
Made by Thames Distillers this british gin is brewes using modern technques with traditional botanicals and a pinch of spicy taste

4.- Monkey 47
Coming up this year from the 7th position, the dry gin of the German Black Forest is earning larger fame and more fans around the world with it's unique botanical ingredients and despite its high price for smaller bottles. One must have for dry gin lovers

3.- Bombay
Its Sapphire keeps shining on the third place. One of the favourites in the USA market and becoming more trendy in Europe thanks in big part to very visible sponsorships and image marketing campaigns. The favourite London Dry of the Las Vegas city mayor (it's said he never goes to bed before drinking one of those bottles to the bottom!)

2.- Beefeater
If there would be a price for the most londoner gin, Beefeater will always win it. 100% tradition, simply a brilliant, dry and affordable gin that has cautivated millions of people around the world. The gin of the royal guard (ones of the few that in times could afford eating beef, thus they were called the "beef eaters") Again repeats on the second place.

And the Best Seller of 2014 is......

1.- Tanqueray
They keep once more their first place. Its dry gin is superb, with a taste beloved by both dry and distilled gin lovers and at a very competitive price. But this record is also earned by the success of their other premium gins, specially the No. Ten and Rangpur with their characteristic fresh citric flavours.

Now the list of the most trendy in the best bars and restaurants!

10.- Bombay

9.- No.3

8.- Caorunn

7.- Gin Mare

6.- Beefeater

5.- Fords

4.- Sipsmith

3.- Tanqueray

2.- Monkey 47

And the Most Trendy of 2014....

1.- Hendrick's!!!

As you see several of the most trendy gins aren't in between the most sold! I encourage you now to explore and taste them to find out why and share it with your friends and the Gins and Tonics community!

:)

10/12/2014

"A tale of two Gins"

One brand, one recipe, same ingredients but two completely different flavors. This is the story of two twins, born from the spirit of Cognac and how both revolutionized their world. Come with me and discover G'Vine...

In 2001 in the region of Cognac in France, a master distiller decided to rescue a 13th century recipe from oblivion. It was the recipe for making flavored drinks out of pure neutral alcohol distilled from the best Cognac's Ugni Blanc grapes, the same grapes used for elaborating the world famous brandy which carries it's region name. He decided to make something risky, innovative, revolutionary, something that many others would later copy even when he still didn't know... He decided to make gin out of wine alcohol.

So he took the wine of Ugni Blanc and distilled it to get a pure neutral alcohol which he would use as base unlike other brands which use corn or wheat. This alcohol has more sugar content thus giving the mix a more dense consistency and a sweeter character.

He engraved the drink's DNA with the best essences of its origins. He added wine flowers inside and he let them macerate before distilling the mix again. He called this product "the Spirit of the Wine". It contained a great floral aroma and taste with the sweet-sour punch of the Ugni Blanc.

In order to dress his creation with the gin's blessing, he took the Spirit of the Grape into a Florentine distillation pot and steamed with it a mix of ginger root, nutmeg, liquorice, cubeb berries, lime, green cardamom, cassia bark, coriander and of course juniper.

At the end of the process he decided he would not bring to the world one drink out of this recipe but two. This is when he truly revolutionized the world of the gins. Instead of taking the last distillation product, mixing it with pure water and bottle it, he decided he would mix the products of the three distillation steps and mix them in certain proportions for elaborating two models, both classified as Ultra Premium.

- The G'Vine Nouaison: Bottled in gray. Has a dominant presence of the botanical product. It's a gin that resembles the typical dry gin flavors but supported by the slight aroma of the grape flowers. One gin for the dry gin lovers.

- The G'Vine Floraison: Bottled in green. It's mainly Spirit of the Grape and shows a bitter-sweet tasty flavor beloved by ladies. With its flower and grape aroma surprises everyone who never tried it before. One of the best distilled gins, tailor-made for distilled gin fans and vodka lovers.

This technique mixing several distillation products has been proven as a very effective way to infuse new ingredients into gins and creating more stable aromas and flavors through different batches. Other gins now use it to create their unique flavors and aromas like Gin Mare.

My advice: Both gins have a very high content proof of alcohol which combined with the higher sugar content makes them easy to drink and fast to come to the head, so try not to have more than a couple of them and then change to something more dry!

I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, leave a Like :)

Thanks for your time!

04/12/2014

The Egg Bottle, by Jacob Schweppe

You probably saw but didn't notice the oval/egg shape that forms the bottle of Schweppes Tonic Water. This is even more clear in the "Heritage" limited edition. But why? Is it just a fancy design preference? Wouldn't be cheaper to just use standard bottles? There is a reason behind, one that just a few know, which take us to the 18th century and even to the Titanic. I want to share it with you today...

It was the German (from Witzenhausen) Jacob Schweppe who created it. He created the first company to produce soda water at industrial scale in 1790 by that time named "Schweppe, Paul and Gosse" after the three partners (we will come into more detail in another post about the history Schweppes).

At the beginning he was storing the soda waters in bottles made of earthenware and closed by a cork but the gas was soon escaping through the cork when they were stored standing as it became dry and porous. He created then a bottle with the shape of an egg which could not stand vertical but laying, thus keeping the cork wet and the gas inside for longer time. One of the first's Schweppe's bottles and collector's treasure is the one you see at the bottom of the picture.

It soon became a problem that the gas was as well escaping through the walls of the porous earthenware so they decided to make the new bottles out of glass. These bottles could hold the gas without problem for a long time, which was needed for the operations Schweppe was later starting in London. The design became very popular by the end of the 18th century as it was so effective for all drinks with gas like champagne, natural gassified mineral waters or sparkling wines, as well as for the soda waters of the numerous competitors that appeared. It allowed ships to carry these drinks overseas and opened new ways for export businesses. In 1808 William F. Hamilton patented the design in the US under the name of "Torpedo Bottle", reason why it's also known as "Hamilton Bottle".

But this design has a peculiarity, which combined with alcoholic content made it earn another of its nicknames, perhaps the most funny one: As it was impossible to just leave it standing on the table, whenever anyone opened a bottle of sparkling wine they had to drink it completely before leaving it down again! Therefore it became known as "Drunken Bottle" :)

One example of the firsts bottles Jacob Schweppe used on his venture in London is the second one from the bottom.

Years later, during 19th century, the company splits and the London business gets the famous name "Schweppes". Some decades after Jacob died the company became extremely successful and they decided to make new bottles, smaller than the other ones, from which they are said they sold millions. This was the bottle you see right in the middle of the pic. You clearly read now the brand "Schweppes" labeled on the cork.

The old design nevertheless continued inspiring many of the modern bottles' industrial design as you see on the second bottle from the top.

On April the 10th of 1912 when the titanic steamed out of Southampton, Walter James Hawskford, the first Exports Executive of Schweppes was on board on his way to open the business in the US. He was carrying with him some sample egg bottles with Schweppes and the legend says one of the Jacob's original bottles as well. When four days later the ship sunk near Terranova, all the bottles went down with it, but James survived.

It was around 1998 when Schweppes, decided to carry out some secret operations around the world for rescuing as many of them as possible from sunken ships. One of those operations took place on the coast of Cádiz (Spain), where a steam cargo ship sunk when carrying them to Sevilla or Gibraltar around 1870. Now two of them are in the museum of the Underwater Archaeology Center (CAS) in Cádiz.

Some years later, around 2012 one of the bottles sunk in the Titanic was recovered in perfect conditions and they used this event and bottle to shape the bottles of their new Premium Limited Edition "Heritage" Tonic Water (the bottle at the top)

This egg shaped bottles from the 18th and early 19th century are very valuable and appreciated by collectors. So if you ever happen to find an egg shaped Schweppes, avoid the impulse to mix it with gin! Perhaps you will be able to afford Gins and Tonics for the rest of your life with the money you can make out of it! ;)

27/11/2014

Dry Gin vs Distilled Gin

Many times we read the bottles of our favourite gins and we notice that they are mainly classified into two categories: dry or distilled. What's exactly the difference between both? What does it mean to our taste?

Well, the main difference lays on the distillation process:

- Dry gins must have just one botanical distillation where the juniper must be dominant and must not contain any other added sugar or sweeteners.

- Distilled gins must be compliant with the minimum criteria for being named gins (that's for another post), but may have as many botanical distillations as they want and include natural sweeteners and flavours from fruits or herbs.

When we try some dry gins, we notice they all have a dominant bitter taste from the juniper with some other smaller taste variations between each. Distilled gins on the other hand can't be compared to each other by flavour because many times the dominant flavours are fruits like orange or mango or herbs like rosemary or mint.

What we definitely notice on most of distilled ones is that they are a bit more dense than the dry ones. Try to put both, a dry and a distilled, on a wine glass and move them in circles. You will notice that the distilled leaves the mark around the glass where it touches and slowly forms small drops that fall down along the glass. This phenomena is caused by sugar because it turns the drink more dense. More sugar means "easier to drink" but, specially with gins and strong alcoholic drinks, too much sugar makes the alcohol take over faster and gives you a good headache if you have too much.

So my advice is to start drinking the sweetest gin you like at the beginning and after one or two glasses the most change to something more dry. Dry gins are very clean in taste. Perfect for traditional gin lovers. If you want to try other flavours or you didn't/don't like gin, choose a distilled one with a flavour you like and you'll be positively surprised.

Extra tip: for vodka lovers, distilled gins are very similar to flavoured vodkas like Absolut but with the bitter background of the juniper. If you like flavoured vodkas, give the distilled gins a try :)

17/11/2014

Demystifying the Hendrick's Gin with Cucumber

When I talk to people that say they like gin tonics, I always ask which one is for them the best one. Most of the time the answer is Hendrick's Gin with cucumber...

Well, Hendrick's is a very good gin, one of my favourites, but if you believe mixing it with cucumber is the best flavour you can get, it means you probably never tried it with anything else. The combination has so much cucumber that you (unless you have the nose and taste of a pro) basically miss all the other ingredients of both the gin and the tonic. It fits wonderful with an orange twist that even with a cucumber slice it makes the mix much more interesting and sensitive.

I don't say its a bad mix, but it is like eating always cucumber salad, you sometimes just miss some more flavour. You should not think you found the ultimate flavour and stick to it till the end of times when there is a huge world for tasting with gin tonics, even if you want to stick to Hendrick's as gin.

So go forward! Explore! Try new combinations! Surprise the next one who asks you about gin tonics with a mix he never tried and share one together! Use all the possibilities! Out there there are gins made out of mango, orange, basil, mint... Or try to combine Hendrick's with any of its other flavours like rose petals and a floral mixer!

And never forget that the most important is how is it served: on a big ball glass topped with ice, 5cl of gin and 20 of tonic served directly on one of the ice stones for preserving the gas.

What do you think? Share your comments with me! :)

15/10/2014

You can already download and print the tasting sheet we will use for our seminar!

An awesome custom design designed in Canva by manuel.achucarro.

12/10/2014

Yesterday was a successful Saturday evening! We served at Tapas4You over 25 perfect-serve gin tonics and taught over 15 people how to combine and serve them! One more little step forward spreading the gin tonic culture in Augsburg! :)

I'm very excited for next Thursday's GinTonic Seminar! :)

11/10/2014

Tonight Saturday 11th, Manu Achúcarro will give you advice and teach you how to make "perfect serves" if you come to Tapas4You Centro and order a GinTonic from 21:00 on! :)