The best way to let the flavour of gin shine is to go easy on the mixer. Photograph: ahirao_photo/Getty/iStockphoto Fiona Beckett on drinks So many gins … but are you a purist or a pioneer? Juniper is the classic gin flavouring, but bottles infused with citrus and other botanicals make for equally fresh-tasting tipples

How are you feeling about gin at the moment? Love it? Totally over it? Somewhere in between, but a bit overwhelmed? No surprise if it’s the latter: there are so many gins out there. Spirits specialist The Whisky Exchange lists 674 different lines, and more keep arriving (the International Wine & Spirit awards had 1,100 gin entries this year, compared with just over 800 in 2020), but the Exchange’s view is that the market has finally plateaued and that customers are returning to old favourites such as Hendrick’s, Tanqueray and Beefeater. “We are definitely seeing a slowdown in the uptake of new brands on the site,” says head buyer Dawn Davies.

So, how to explain the continued stream of gin newcomers? Truth is, as with most markets, there’s more than one type of gin drinker, from purists, such as myself, who like nothing more than a big hit of juniper and a classic G&T, to what marketeers euphemistically refer to as “a more youthful demographic”, up for much more experimental flavours and serving suggestions. Judging by all the fancy bottles I’ve seen, there are also those who buy gin to look at as much as to drink. (As I’ve suggested before, gin collecting is “a thing”.)

The wide variance in tastes makes hard-and-fast recommendations problematic. I rather liked Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Corsican Lemon Gin, for instance, which hadn’t gone down well with one purchaser, who described it as “barely having any taste at all”, which made me wonder if they’d used too much tonic. The common recommendation of three or four times as much tonic to gin often drowns it, especially if the gin is under 40% abv. I generally start with one-and-a-half times as much tonic to gin and, depending on the strength of the gin, work my way up from there: one measure of gin to two of tonic with most 40% gins, and 1:3 with ones over 43%. I generally use lighter tonics, too, so as not to mask the character of fruit-flavoured gins and rarely flavoured ones.

The fact is, it’s an uphill struggle to compete with tried-and-tested favourites. I love Sipsmith, one of my regular go-tos, but didn’t take to its limited-edition Strawberry Smash Gin, which didn’t seem nearly fruity enough. And I still prefer Gin Mare to newcomers such as Portobello Road’s new Savoury Gin, decorative though the bottle is. Standard bottles are often cheaper than limited editions, too. But then, with gin, as with so many other drinks, it pays to shop and play around with how you serve them.

Four gins to enjoy this summer

Haysmith pink grapefruit and orange gin £14.99 Aldi, 40%. I tend to think of grapefruit as a fruit to cheer up February, rather than to drink at the height of summer, but citrus always hits the spot.This has a really good, pithy pink grapefruit flavour.

Source: The Guardian

Powered by NewsAPI.org