Innehållsförteckning för Jun/Aug 2021 från Gin Magazine

After a bit of a difficult relationship with them in my late teens and early 20s, I can now unashamedly admit that I love food and I love eating (my better half would make a joke here about how I end up wearing as much of any meal as I eat, but I’m sure that could be interpreted as a compliment to the chef). Thanks to my foodie mother, I’m lucky that eating out has always been a part of my life and this has given me access to some truly memorable foodie experiences, from sampling a salad with Canadian sea vegetables on Vancouver Island, to eating slow-roasted lamb and potatoes by the sea on Zakynthos, to a very theatrical dry ice-packed dessert at the Space Needle in Seattle. There…

“If you go into a kitchen and tell the chef that they can only have one pot, that they have to put all their ingredients in it at the same time, cook them at the same temperature and for the same amount of time… well, that’s incredibly restrictive.” This is how former bartender and drinks educator Will Lowe describes how he saw most gin being made before he, along with his wife and business partner Lucy, decided to embrace gin making and founded Cambridge Distillery nine years ago. As a chef’s new dish results from the combination of different ingredients and preparations, Lowe’s gins are created by the process of distilling each botanical individually, then blending those elements together at a later stage. “We set about finding the ideal conditions…

Lemon – wedges are great for gin and tonics and Negronis, wheels and slices are eye-catching in long drinks, and peels/twists are striking in Martinis. Lime – more tart than lemon, lime garnishes can help to balance out sweeter gins. Combining lemon and lime garnishes is known as an “Evans-style” serve. Orange – generally sweeter and juicier than other types of citrus, orange works notably well with spicy gins and festive tipples, as well as being a classic garnish for a Negroni. Grapefruit – one of the tartest and most bitter wedges, this is favoured by some drinkers who like an especially dry G&T or Martini. Other citrus – it’s worth exploring others when they are available: finger limes, which contain zingy, caviar-like globules, are a real showstopper, as are…

Taster biographies Bethany Whymark After studying English literature at university, Bethany spent five years working as a journalist for regional newspaper groups in the east of England before moving into the spirits industry. She now edits Gin Magazine, trade website TheDrinksReport.com and Rum Magazine. David T. Smith David T. Smith is an independent spirits writer and consultant who specialises in gin. He is a chair judge for a number of spirits competitions and has written widely on the subject, incuding The Craft of Gin, Forgotten Spirits and Long Lost Liqueurs and Gin Tonica. He was winner of the 2016 Gin Communicator of the Year award. THE PROCESS • All samples are blind tasted, with ABV and style the only information disclosed.• Samples are tasted individually over a two-week period.• Tasters…

Tweet us @ginmagazineuk or email editor@paragraph.co.uk for a chance to feature Do other people ever just drink gin and water? Not fizzy water, flavoured water or water for a pink gin, but just good, old-fashioned, unadulterated water? ALICIA, WICKHAM A good observation; these days, a lot of attention is given to cocktails and various tonics, and a small, gradually increasing set of gin fans like to enjoy gin neat. A lot of people are familiar with the idea that whisky can be enjoyed with a drop or two of water, but what about gin? Your question also reminds me of another query: I had never got to the bottom of why so many gin companies historically produced large, branded gin water jugs. These were much larger than the equivalent whisky…

I was recently participating in a talk on the potential implications of the most recent update to the EU gin regulations. While readers will undoubtedly be glad that this potentially dry topic is not the subject of today’s column, it did strike me that the degree of freedom awarded to producers is much greater than it could be – something that I think should be applauded! Unconventional gin botanicals have long caused a raise of the purist’s eyebrow (I remember a time when grapefruit was about as “crazy” as it got), but now the international gin scene is host to a cornucopia of flora (and sometimes even fauna!). Currently in vogue as a botanical is turmeric: the yellow-orange root, relation of ginger root, and general stainer of clothes with a…

Some things are matches made in heaven; be it bacon and eggs, peanut butter and jelly or gin and ice cream, we take these pairings to be self-evident. What? Was it something I said? I stand by my American love of the textural complexities of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Oh, it seems the idea of juniper spirits and frozen desserts has not stood the test of time – why is that? What is ice cream if not cream, sugar, flavour and eggs? Sounds like a classic cocktail to me. So, when did adult imbibers turn their backs on this dynamic duo? To fully understand this perplexity, we need to look at an early 20th-century phenomenon known as the soda fountain. Be it the Soda Shop, Malt Shop, Milk…

UK gin maker Silent Pool has launched what it believes is the world’s first paper-based spirits bottle. The Frugalpac bottle for its new Green Man Woodland Gin is five times lighter than a glass bottle and has a carbon footprint six times lower than glass or PET plastic bottles. The paperboard layer is made from 94 per cent recycled paper, and the pouch inside is also recyclable, making the bottles fully recyclable. Silent Pool Distillers director Ian McCulloch said: “Other spirits brands have spoken about using paperboard bottles for a while. However, when you scratch the surface, you realise that they’re quite far away from making that a reality. We wanted to make a real difference right now.” Inspired by the woodlands of Surrey, Silent Pool’s home county, the Green…

The story of California gin, and craft gin in general, begins with Fritz Maytag installing garage doors in a corner, off a loading dock at San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing, in 1993. Behind those roll-up doors, the ‘water committee’ met. In the historic brewery, which Maytag had bought 30 years prior, they were “testing the water” for distilling and trying to keep the distillery a secret from the general public until the spirits were released. All the employees knew, but the project was concealed from the prying eyes of electricians, pipe fitters and other tradesmen wandering by. Maytag, heir to the appliance fortune, had every reason to believe people were watching his moves as he tinkered with creating whiskey and gin. Within a few months of ordering malted rye for Old…

When I’m not ‘on the clock’ writing about gin, cooking is a passion of mine – specifically, cooking without recipes. There’s something magical in the art of combining herbs, spices and ingredients to create something unique and delicious. In the early 2010s, contemporary-style gin exploded from niche into the mainstream. Making cocktails with some of these new gins suddenly felt a bit more like the kind of cooking I enjoyed. Distillers experimented with an ever-increasing range of botanicals. Some of these botanicals paired great with tonic water and sang when combined in the precise ratio of the Negroni. Others? They didn’t. But was a nicely balanced juniper and mint-forward gin inherently flawed because it didn’t work in a Gibson? My greatest inspiration for working with these new gins was to…

Ian McCulloch and James Shelbourne put their years of marketing and commercial experience together to found Silent Pool Distillers in 2015. Since then, they have been pushing hard to build the brand’s gobal footprint and its sustainability credentials. What have been some of the most memorable and interesting countries and places that your work has taken you? Japan was probably the most exotic. We have a great distributor there; they gave us an amazing tour including Kyoto, which we got to by Bullet Train. They also took us out for a classic Japanese dinner in the old quarter of Kyoto; departing the restaurant in a very gloomy street at midnight we passed two geisha on their way home. I’ve never seen anything so mesmerising. Shanghai and Hong Kong were incredible,…