Since it was a do nothing day, I decided that the first drink of my homemade gin would be a gin and tonic. I actually believe that’s a better way to taste a gin than drinking it straight from the shot glass; a good tonic should tame the harsh alcohol taste and let more of the subtle herbal flavors come through. And just to make sure it was decent, I decided to line it up against my small batch gin and my all purpose gin. Of course, I made sure that I properly controlled this experiment: I carefully measured four ounces of tonic and one ounce of gin into each of the glasses.
Of the three bottles of gin, the only one which smacked me with a distinct pleasant gin smell upon opening was the small batch gin. However, when I picked up my glass to drink from it, my homemade gin also had a very agreeable gin smell to it. And it was very good; I definitely tasted juniper, rosemary, and warm spices. The spices that I tasted were probably the cardamom and the coriander, but I couldn’t be certain. Next to the homemade gin, the all purpose gin didn’t have a scent and seemed rather flavorless. The quinine in the tonic definitely shone through; however, all the uniqueness that one associates with good gin was absent. Basically, it was like drinking a vodka tonic. Fortunately, it didn’t have any strong alcoholic flavors, so that was a point in its favor. The small batch gin was definitely aromatic, and it had a junipery herbal taste that managed to overcome the quinine without clashing with it. Curiously, it didn’t seem as flavorful as my homemade gin. That’s a good thing, because I can probably repeat my homemade gin, but Batch #14 will most likely be unavailable at the distillery when I finish my bottle.
Once my homemade gin passed the gin and tonic challenge, I was curious to see how it fared in some of my other favorite gin cocktails. But which ones? Believe it or not, approximately a quarter of my posts to date have made some mention of gin. (There were even more posts mentioning chocolate.) Even if I just went back to my experiments with gin equinox cocktails, there was still a fairly sizable list of cocktails that I liked. And what fun was there in repeating experiments that I had already done?
Small interesting distillery to the rescue! The distillery where I bought my small batch gin - and had a fascinating conversation with the distiller during their open house - actually had posted over two pages of cocktail recipes that featured both their standard and their small batch gins. Just scrolling through it, I felt like they had compiled my favorites: the Aviation, the French 75, the Gimlet, the Negroni. And if I was truly feeling adventurous, I could add in a Corpse Reviver #2 or (and?) a White Negroni. Maybe even try the recipe for the Negroni Sbagliato that caught my eye in the new book that I had just finished reading.
My sister and I both agree that gin is fabulous, and that the French 75 is one of the best ways to enjoy gin. In fact, the only Mason Jar cocktail that we completely finished over Christmas was the French Lavender, a riff on the French 75 that substitutes lavender liqueur for simple syrup. If you aren’t familiar with the French 75, it’s a base of gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice that gets topped off with sparkling wine. Since I really enjoyed the Clementine 75 during my New Year’s celebration, I thought that it wouldn’t be too difficult to twist up the French 75 with some beautiful fresh squeezed blood orange juice that I found in my local grocery store. The Clementine 75 required infusing the sugar syrup with juniper, cinnamon, dried cranberries and ginger, which really gave an interesting flavor to the drink. However, rather than substitute both the lemon juice and the sugar syrup, I simply replaced the lemon juice with the blood orange juice.
My blood orange French 75 turned out to be very good, even though it was missing the characteristic sourness of the lemon juice. The uniqueness of my homemade gin was overwhelmed by the simple syrup and the blood orange juice. However, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the quality of my homemade gin didn’t add any strong alcoholic or other off flavors. Still, as interesting as the juice substitution was, I still think I prefer the lemon juice version.
Negroni
The next time I engaged my gin tasting project, I was in the mood for something fizzy, so I thought of the Negroni Sbagliato. I remembered two things about the recipe: “sbagliato” meant “mistake” in Italian, and the bartender’s “mistake” involved adding prosecco to the traditional Negroni. With those two facts in mind, I was excited to try my first Negroni Sbagliato. However, when I checked the recipe in my book, I discovered that it was I who was sbagliato: the bartender’s mistake involved substituting the gin with prosecco. There was no gin in the drink! So, despite how fantastic it sounded, the drink had no place in a gin tasting project.
The classic Negroni is actually a variation of the Milano-Torino, also known as the Americano, which is Campari (from Milan), sweet red vermouth (from Turin), and soda water. From here you can guess what happened: someone walked into the bar and demanded that the soda water in his Americano be replaced by gin. And that someone just happened to be Count Negroni. The Negroni is classically an equinox cocktail, with equal parts of gin, Campari, and sweet red vermouth. However, being the research geek that I am, I discovered that one of the reputable cocktail sites that I often read had done a lot of research (and tasting) to find the perfect Negroni recipe. That recipe adjusted the classic proportions to be slightly heavier on the gin and slightly lighter on the Campari and sweet vermouth. Since I detest Campari, I quickly adopted the new recipe as my standard. I’ve been using it since September 2017 without any complaints.
Well, I actually had a complaint with my Negroni this time. The first sip of my Negroni was disturbingly bitter, as was the second sip, and the third sip. I wasn’t sure what went wrong. I had carefully measured the homemade gin, the Campari, the sweet red vermouth, and even added half an ounce of cold water to simulate melted ice cubes. And then I realized what the problem was: I had just been eating Nutella with a spoon from the jar. After I chased that taste away with some pesto pasta, the Negroni tasted just fine. The homemade gin had no negative impact on my drink; then again, Campari is such a distinct taste that it would be difficult for the delicate taste of my homemade gin to win the battle for supremacy.
Aviation
The Aviation holds a special place in my heart. A few years ago, a gentleman friend and I went out after a formal event with a whole crew of people to a bar near the venue. When he noticed that I was getting hit on by a friend who had a little too much to drink, he suggested that we should get out of there. So we paid our tab, politely said our farewells, and ended up at a cute martini bar with a super interesting menu of classic cocktails ordered by the year that they were invented. I ordered an Aviation because it contained creme de violette and maraschino liqueur, both of which seemed too exotic to add to my liquor cabinet. Of course, I sincerely appreciated his getting me out of an uncomfortable situation, but even more I appreciated the opportunity to end the evening with a decent drink and even better conversation.
Since then, I have added both creme de violette and maraschino liqueur to my fabulous liquor cabinet and have experimented with both of them. But the Aviation is the only cocktail that I know that combines them both. When I first acquired my bottle of creme de violette, I made my Aviation from a 2015 Pop Sugar recipe that was posted on the Kitchen Swagger website. I liked that version so much that I repeated it in the first batch of holiday Mason jar cocktails that I made for my sister.
However, I was very intrigued by the Aviation recipe on the distiller’s website. It contained all the same ingredients as the Pop Sugar recipe, but in different proportions. The distiller’s recipe contained more gin (their standard rather than their small batch), more lemon juice, and less maraschino liqueur. Both recipes used 1/4 ounce of creme de violette, so that wasn’t a deciding factor. Looking back at my notes, my sister and my mother found the Chiltern Aviation to be disagreeable because it tasted like medicine, which I attributed to the prevalence of the maraschino liqueur. Even though Little Z, her friend, and I enjoyed the Classic Aviation just as it was, I still decided to try the distiller’s recipe.
Although the distiller’s Aviation recipe wasn’t as purple as I would have liked, I did enjoy it. This recipe seemed to be more balanced than the Pop Sugar recipe. The maraschino liqueur was much less prevalent, which diminished the medicinal taste of the drink. I wouldn’t say that the medicinal taste disappeared all together, but it definitely receded into the background. And that was okay because that’s what distinguishes the Aviation from other gin and lemon juice drinks. Aside from the bright purple color!
The Verdict
I really like my homemade gin! Since the company offers “refills” at a reasonable price, I don’t even have to be miserly about my use of it. I still may use the all purpose gin to make my Mason jars and other batch cocktails, but I can feel free to use the homemade gin in my personal cocktails on the odd evening.
As always, no need to worry about me. My research into my homemade gin cocktails took place over several days, and never when I had to travel, make critical decisions, or have important conversations. There was definitely no gin involved in the decision to participate in a continuing professional education trip to the Caribbean or in the decision to book a girls’ trip to California the weekend before I go to the Caribbean.
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