Meal Ticket. City of gins

Long considered vodka’s uncool grandma, my favourite drink, gin, is in the throes of a worldwide resurgence. For once, I’m ahead of the trend, having hopped onto the bandwagon years ago when it turned out that my spirit animal is, in fact, an elderly moustachioed colonel. And as I was in London for my birthday this year, it seemed fitting to celebrate it with a gin-themed evening in this city, gin’s spiritual, if not original, home.

Gin, which takes its name from the French and Dutch words for juniper, genièvre, and genever (or jenever), is of Dutch origin (and the root of the expression ‘Dutch courage’). It’s made by distilling fermented grains with juniper berries and herbs, spices or other aromatics. Gin, in its cheapest form, was the ruin of London’s poor in the 18th-century, and in a more refined version, coupled with quinine, the making of the British Empire in the next.

A decade ago, vodka ruled bars and clubs everywhere, its characterless alcoholic bite making it the perfect base for all cocktails ending in “-tini.” Gin was represented by low-quality brands which did nothing for its stuffy reputation, and didn’t exactly shine in cocktails either. Its restrained elegance meant that it was usually dismissed as a relic of Prohibition, a country club drink, a colonial hangover or an old fogey’s sundowner; even the clean perfection of the gin-and-tonic, its commonest avatar, was easy to overlook.

Happily, the ginaissance has now taken off, in London, Paris and elsewhere. The revival is spearheaded by small-batch gins distilled in artisanal copper vats (by people sporting pointy beards and bow ties) and sold in trendy apothecary-style bottles. London boasts all manner of specialised gin bars, tastings, tours and distillery visits (including to the Ginstitute on Portobello Road). And gin’s sidekick, tonic water, is riding the wave too; purists now faint at the sight of a yellow-belted Schweppes or Catch bottle, supermarkets sell artisanal tonic and quinine syrups; and many bars make their own.

At 214 Bermondsey in Southwark, staffed by people who look like they moonlight in a hipster barbershop, the bar boasts nearly 50 types of gin. They also offer ‘gin flights’, or as I thought of them, ‘gin exams’. Each ‘flight’ offers three distinctive gins, served on ice in unmarked glasses; customers are asked to identify the gins based on tasting notes.

“How hard can a gin test be?” we said to each other, giddily ordering all three of the ‘flights’. A piece of paper provided tasting notes and the names of the gins; you were to guess which was which, before tearing open a sealed envelope to check your answers. Tonic was provided, but our waiter advised us to taste each spirit neat first. (214 makes its own tonic, the amber-gold Bermondsey Tonic Water or BTW for short.) We began with the ‘Tour of London’, which included the East London Liquor Company’s Dry, Little Bird from Peckham, and Moonshine Kid’s Dog’s Nose, distilled in Bethnal Green. Three out of the four of us correctly identified the Moonshine, which features two kinds of beer hops in its mix in the Dutch style. This gives the Dog’s Nose a distinctive, bitter, yeasty bite, unlike all the others we tried.

But from then on, everything went downhill. As we nosed about in the numbered glasses, we were struck by the difficulty of putting taste and smell into words. Gin is a complex blend of similar flavours; apart from the juniper, there may be coriander seeds, angelica, citrus peels, elderflower, nettle, chamomile, liquorice, rosemary, cinnamon, or nutmeg. The new crop of gins also use more esoteric ingredients like heather, dandelion, kelp, saffron, baobab, frankincense and fresh cream.

“Big and creamy?” Friend #2 read aloud from the tag for the East London Liquor Company’s Dry. “Never heard of a gin being creamy.”

We attempted to discern creaminess in any of the clear gins before us, and failed.

“I think this one has anise,” one friend said.

“That’s coriander seeds,” corrected someone else. “So this is Little Bird?”

“I don’t get any coriander at all,” said Friend #1. “It tastes … green,” I said finally, like a drunk synaesthete. This was getting stressful. Certain gins had distinct flavours, but we were hopeless at naming them: was that twang lemon peel or nettle? Was that coniferous pop sage or the ever-present juniper? And the mention of anomalies like bark or cubeb berries only served to further befuddle us.

The ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ set was no picnic either. “What does cassia bark taste like?” asked Friend #2, reading the notes for No 209, from San Francisco.

“No idea, I don’t go about gnawing on bark,” I said. “Wait, I think this one’s the fennel one! Is this Death’s Door?”

I was wrong: the “fennel” was actually the sage, bay laurel and Douglas fir notes of the California forest in ‘Saint George’s Terroir’.

Cassia bark, Google revealed, was a kind of dalchini (cinnamon), but by then it was too late. We glared at the criss-crossed scorecard. Friends #2 and #3 were still doggedly sipping away, trying to distinguish between lavender and orris root.

“Put the tonic in,” said Friend #1 despairingly, at last. This seemed like the only possible response to the situation. Giving up, we turned the scorecard over, poured the Bermondsey Tonic Water into the nine identical glasses, and passed them around. I took the Little Bird, which the bar called ‘a London Dry with citrus aspirations’.

“Cheers,” we chorused. Immediately, the world seemed a better place. Whatever the botanicals that had contributed to the seemingly simple, but apparently horribly complex flavours of the gins, we were grateful for them. My gin-and-tonic was crisp and cold, all garden-fresh and floral, like the one hinge day between spring and summer. It was happy hour at last.

Naintara Maya Oberoi is a food writer based in Paris; @naintaramaya

COMMENT NOW