Gin is the same as juniper? Not quite, because in order to be allowed to declare your gin, you need another plant ingredient besides juniper, that is, a botanical.
The literature speaks of 120’s possible ingredients found in the world’s gin diversity.
A current trend is to make a gin that tastes good with as few ingredients as possible. Brick Gin from Germany brings it on 3 Botanicals. A gin with a strong juniper note. Very purist. We like it very much with an Indian Tonic.
But back to gin production
The botanicals are processed using a vegetable base alcohol as a starting point. This is where it gets super exciting, because virtually every distiller processes their botanicals differently
For example, in one of the most beautiful distilleries in the world (Monkey47, in the Black Forest) the following happens: At Monkey47, selected botanicals are put into a water-alcohol mixture for a few hours, in other words mazarised. Then freshly processed citrus fruit peelings are added to the macerate, the juniper is shredded to the point and added to the macerate as well as the remaining botanicals. The entire mixture is distilled in one of the four distilleries. This is the summary which happens every day in the Black Forest with the monkeys.
To declare gin in the end, the gin needs at least 37.5%. Most gin brands bring it to 40% and more.
Just as there are different forms of processing that we will deepen at a later date, the distillers also use very different qualities of botanicals. We will dedicate our next post to this topic.
Are you planning an event with gin? Get in touch with us.
Click here to go to the store for the GIN TONIC boxes