When in doubt, gin it out!

A GIN TASTING

Well, hello everyone! It's been a good two and a half months (!) since my last post. My sincerest apologizes, I just happened to become a father for my first-born daughter, so I was rather busy all this time :D

But have no fear, I am here, with new tricks in my bag! My new (and fourth) shipment from Germany arrived just dandyishly so I could pull off another great tasting. This time we were to explore the world of gin. Given, from only two countries, but still!

Before we get to the details, I will try to "open up" my history to gin. As for most, gin equals Beefeater, Bombay, Gordon's and gin&tonics. It does make excellent other cocktails as well (the legendary French 75 for example) but is it really good drunk pure? This we were about to find out. Of course, we sampled these products with some "special" tonics as well and finished the night with three different gin-based cocktails.

Our first gin, a true classic, if you may, was Beefeater London dry gin. This was known to everyone of us the best. The second one, an organic gin, The Duke of Munich, from...you guessed, Munich. The last was a gin "titled" by the world as a "super-premium-excellence-diamond-platinum-one-of-a-kind"; Monkey 47 Schwartzwald dry gin from Germany as well! All of them were at least 45% ABV (90 proof), the Beefeater and Monkey 47 being 47% (94 proof) respectively. So stronger than your usual stuff.

SAMPLING

As you can see, this was super interesting :D What was really remarkable was the fact that gin as a product is really versatile! The amount of different styles of gin has sky rocketed in the last few years. Taste-wise, the Beefeater was the purest. Meaning, this tastes as people would imagine gin should taste like. Moreover, even with 47% it was incredibly smooth.

The Duke of Munich on the other hand, quite the opposite. Although in its purest form it wasn't quite as palatable as the other two, it had a long, lingering aftertaste. To the nose it was a bit stuffy. But there's quite the twist to this gin, explained later!

Thirdly and as our "joker" the Monkey 47. According to their websites they used lingonberries in the process of making this gin. Anyhow, this gin was extremely fresh and lemony! One wouldn't believe it's gin at first! It was truly an exception to the bunch.

So now that we've sampled these pure, how about some tonic added?

Instead of using the o'regular Schweppes tonic water, I had a few bottles of Tonic Monaco at my disposal (from Aquamonaco). With silly 0.23L sizes (seriously), we used the extra dry tonic with our dry London gin and the regular tonic with the two others.

Of course the garnish part plays an important role. With the Beefeater, a lemon slice. The Duke of Munich received an orange slice (as recommended on their website) and with the Monkey 47 I decided to go with a lime wedge (just because). I tried to extract some juice of said fruit before adding the tonic.

As you could imagine, adding extra dry tonic with dry gin, the result? Quite dry!

I mean it was really, really dry. And I didn't know you could drink liquid that dry. Phooie! The greatest (positive) reaction was from the Duke of Munich version. Albeit it didn't claim much success by itself, in a tonic it was the best one! The Monkey 47 + tonic did succeed from the given task quite nicely as well. A very refreshing choice!

We finished the evening with three gin cocktails: Club Cover Cocktail, Bee's Knees and the Pegu Club Cocktail, in all using different gins (in given order).

Club Cover Cocktail was liked the best

Okay, I lied. I also made a Boston Sour.

Delicious. Period.

Summa summarum, the world of gin is exploding. The mass-produced "we-all-know-these" gins are getting substituted by special, distiller cuts or otherwise extraordinary products with each having their own little special quirk in their taste. I also believe that everyone can find their own favorite, let it be with or without (any) mixer.