Gin Tasting

[canyonwalker]

Recently I decided to taste-test 3 different brands of gin I've bought. I could make a pun about Dry January and call this London Dry Gin-uary... except for two things. One, I tasted these gins back in December. Yes, this article has been in my blog backlog for 5 weeks. And two, none of these gins is actually from London... or even England. Buckley's is Irish, Hendrick's is Scottish, and Esmé is French.

This is the first time in... possibly forever... that I've had more than 2 different gins in my liquor cabinet. It's also quite possibly the first time I've really thought about tasting gin, plain, with a critical eye. A lot of gins have very harsh flavors. They're not the sort of liquors people drink straight. Even I don't gin straight. I do enjoy a Gin & Tonic, though. I decided taste-testing various gins straight would help me better appreciate its flavor profiles and choose the best one(s) to include in cocktails.



So how did these three make it to my tasting lineup? Get ready, this is really scientific:

• Hendrick's is the incumbent. I was introduced to it by a proudly Scottish colleague almost 9 years ago. Hendrick's is good. It's very smooth so it immediately became my go-to gin. I haven't tried anything else in years. That was my impetus to explore.


• Buckley's and Esmé were two varieties I picked up at Total Wine several weeks ago on a sale.


• Esmé I was curious about because it's a French gin that boasts an infusion of rose petals. What would rose taste like in gin, I wondered. Plus it was on an extra sale for $2 off. 🤣


• Buckley's was a recommendation from a Total Wine employee to round out a 3 gin lineup. Plus, it was part of a buy-two-and-save-$5 sale. 🤣 In seeking the recommendation, though, I didn't ask, "What's similar to Hendrick's?" I asked, "What's good and different from Hendrick's as a point of comparison?"

The tasting was kind of an open-and-shut case. Gin is... as I noted above, not subtle.

• Esmé I tried first, because of the rose petal, and like least, because of the rose petals. I could see it making a fine cocktail for people who like that taste. I'm not one of them.


• Buckley's I tried next. It's harsh. The piney taste of juniper hits like a punch in the face. Stylistically it's the closest to a London Dry Gin out of this trio.


• Hendrick's I tried last. It blew the other two away. It tastes like a gin "should", not like eating flowers like Esmé, and way, way smoother than the punch-in-the-face flavor of Buckley's. Part of Hendrick's fame is its inclusion of cucumber to soften the harsh natural flavor of juniper. I dislike cucumber when it's an ingredient in my food, but here it's subtle enough not to be a problem and balanced so well against the juniper flavor that it's a positive.

BTW I did more than just take a sip of each gin. I tried them in all three orders, to factor out the "What if one left a bad taste in your mouth for the next? problem. I tried them totally plain and with a few drops of fresh lime juice. Then I made a Gin & Tonic with each of them. The basic comparison held through all permutations. ...Permutations, see? This is called Science!

Also, now I need to test more gins. More science! 🤣

Comments

[lowbeyonder]

To add an additional data point: I absolute loathe cucumber. I find even the smell repulsive (which my partner thinks is really weird because she insists it barely even has a smell), but while I'm not one to drink gin straight, Hendrick's is one of my go-to options for cocktails.

The only one I'd really stack up against it is Empress, which is unfortunately pretty thin on the ground here, which has a marvelously floral flavor profile and is also very, very purple, a combination of features that makes for the best aviations I've ever had.

[canyonwalker]

You and I are similar on cucumber vs. Hendrick's. I barely tolerate it in food. About the only thing I eat it in is tzatziki sauce, and even there I pick some of the chunks out with my fork. Its infusion in Hendrick's doesn't taste cucumber-y at all. It just makes the gin taste smooth.

Empress is one of the gins on my radar for trying in the future. ATM, though, it's lower on the list than Citadelle and G&J Greenalls. Have you tried either of those? And— just curious— is Buckley's, an Irish gin I bought in California, a common sight in Ireland?

[lowbeyonder]

I have not tried either of those, no. I thought Buckley's sounded familiar, but I don't actually think I've seen the bottles very often around here, if ever. It's definitely not at our local grocery.

The other one we get a lot (well, "a lot" modified by how often we need new gin, which isn't that often) is Drumshanbo, which I'm not sure I ever saw stateside. And it's a perfectly adequate gin, but doesn't really stand out, it's just very readily available.

[canyonwalker]

Total Wine, the store where I buy most of my liquor nowadays (other than Costco), has two varieties of Drumshanbo. There's Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/gin/drumshanbo-gunpowder-irish-gin/p/192471750 and Drumshanbo Gunpowder Sardinian Citrus https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/gin/drumshanbo-gunpowder-sardinian-citrus-gin/p/238648750. Both are a bit spendy so I wonder if Drumshanbo makes a cheaper, basic gin that isn't sold here.