World Gin Day may have been a couple of weeks back, but after dashing off a quick post about Latvian gin I had somewhere to be – Graphic Bar for a blind tasting of gin with David from Summerfruitcup. However, this was no Beefeater and Tanqueray laden group, instead focusing on a rapidly growing area in the world of juniper flavoured spirits – American gin.
With the flourishing craft distilling scene in the US comes a need to monetise maturing spirit and many of the distillers are turning away from the relatively easy path of producing vodka and also making gins. There are also an increasing number of distillers ignoring aged spirits and focusing solely on vodka and gin, which is an encouraging sign – it’s often easy to see gin as an ‘also ran’ in the craft distilling movement. While the US’s domestic spirit production was huge and varied before Prohibition it has taken rather a large amount of time to push beyond industrially produced alchohol to more widely available artisinal spirits, and gin has happily piggybacked on the explosion.