Gin
began to be absorbed into ever fewer companies with a corporate focus and style. This is what has created the niche for
brands such as Martin Miller’s, Sipsmith, Whitley Neill and the subtly referenced Six O’Clock gins to emerge on the market. Premium priced, high quality, batch distilled and almost handmade, they are all driven by eccentric enthusiasts sharing a dream of quality and fl avour, with no cost or mass-production constraints and often working from a distillery little bigger than a double garage.
Flavouring The appellation ‘London dry gin’ defi nes a type of gin based on production process and the fl avouring botanicals used, not on location of manufacture. Brands that have moved out of London still comply and all the boutique gins are ‘London dry’ too. All conform to the same basic range of ‘botanicals’ such as coriander, orris, orange and lemon peel, with juniper being a dominant essential ingredient. The boutique gin distiller can make his difference by playing with the recipe, choosing real berries or dried fruit rather than essences, adding extra botanicals or using the more costly 100 per cent barley- based spirit.
Distillers discard the beginning and end of the distillation, the ‘tops and tails’, saving only the heart of the run for the gin. The smaller the heart he chooses, the better the purity and quality of the spirit and the higher the cost per litre! Boutique gin pioneer Martin Miller
launched Martin Miller’s “perfect quality gin made by love, obsession and some degree of madness” in 1999. No corporate strategy here, just personal vision, preference and belief. Habitué of London’s Notting Hill boutique life, ‘Antiques Price Guide’ author, hotel owner and general bon viveur, he set out without any pre-set boundaries and seemingly assisted by his many friends as his tasting panel to create a new gin, softer, better for a Martini cocktail and to appeal to the ‘gintelligensia’. The result is the soft and distinctly herby Martin Miller’s gin, distilled in England but bottled in Iceland. Iceland? Ah, yes! The water is an important ingredient boutique distillers can introduce. Spirits come off the still at around 75-80 per cent abv and are then reduced with water to the required bottling strength, 40 per cent and above for boutique gins, while mainstream
82 cywinter 2011
brands are now typically 37 per cent in the UK, as a way to save excise duty on the shelf price. Big production may use de-ionised water from the mains, perfectly good but so pure as to be tasteless. The boutique makers are very particular about their water and the extra taste it can bring to their product. But few go as far as Martin Miller, who chooses to send his English-made gin all the way to Iceland for reducing with pure Iceland spring water. “The fl avour,” say the Icelanders, “comes from mother earth itself.” Hence the ‘imported’ tag on the label. Their main brand is reduced to 40 per cent abv but they also produce a Westbourne Strength (after Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill) at 45 per cent. Experts say the higher the bottled strength the better the martini or g&t! About £20 and £26 respectively. Boutique distillers are typically
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