- Australian-made gins are becoming the global benchmark for quality, perfect for cocktails in the warmer months.
- A great gin depends on balanced botanicals, with juniper as the base and local ingredients like lemon myrtle enhancing flavour.
- Premium gins, like Archie Rose, use careful distillation methods and rare ingredients to create refined, standout blends.
Take off your jacket, leave your ego at the door. It’s time to disband those single malt allegiances as you’re no longer in whisky town. Today it’s all about gin, one of the most prolific spirits available on the market today.
With the warmer months seemingly on the doorstep in Australia, now is the time to start your inevitable education in the world of rare botanicals. Whether it’s a classic Martini, a G&T or a Negroni, a ripper cocktail demands a better gin to truly stand out on the palate.
But with so many gin brands on the market, and Australian-made gin brands like Hickson House, Archie Rose and Four Pillars quickly becoming the benchmark for the ultra-premium market in recent years, how can you be certain you’re investing your hard-earned cash into the right drop?
We’ve hit up two of Australia’s hottest names in the gin industry to find out exactly that. Get your swill on.
What Makes A Good Gin?
The most important thing to arm yourself with when exploring the vast world of gins is knowledge. There’s a lot to consider when selecting your next favourite gin bottle, so here we’re going to go through everything that makes a good gin.
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“Picking a good gin from the mundane ones comes down to the final taste profile,” Krystal Hart, national ambassador for the Diageo World Class Bartending Competition, told DMARGE.
“If you’re a London dry drinker then Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire are your go-to’s, but don’t be afraid of the new world style gins which can have the appearance and taste of a less refined gin and vice versa.”
Ingredients & Botanicals
In both 2012 and 2013, Hart held the distinction of top ten bartenders in the world. She admits that the key to a great gin lies in its ingredients. While juniper provides the base, the selection and balance of botanicals define a gin’s character. Something Dave Withers, Master Distiller of the award-winning Australian gin, Archie Rose, agrees:
“Great gins are all about the juniper up front – they need to reflect the place they’re from. In Australia, we try to use unique native ingredients like lemon myrtle to produce a distinctive-tasting gin. There are many flavour profiles out there from the fruity end to the herbal end to the spice-driven end – in drink like a Gin & Tonic, it needs to shine.”
Dave Withers, Archie Rose Master Distiller
Does A Complex Blend Equal Better Gin?
Not necessarily. Just as there are award-winning single malt whiskies and award-winning blended whiskies, the same also goes for gins with varying levels of blend complexity. Of course, adding more botanicals can create a broader flavour spectrum, but it also increases the potential for imbalance or muddiness in the final product.
“The more ingredients you have in a gin the more complex it is to manufacture, but I don’t think that’s a sign of quality,” explains Withers. “When we manufacture things, we do it for absolute quality – not about efficiency but final flavour. There are good gins at lower prices but we’re fortunate enough to be able to put quality first.”
Just because a gin has a higher number of ingredients doesn’t mean all of them work well together or are needed in the final expression. One of the more appealing qualities of gin is the smoothness and clarity of the bottle; the perfect vehicle for a flavoursome tonic water or a dry martini.
“Gin is like a great perfume at the shops,” Hart added “You walk past a series of perfumes, some are repulsive and some are exactly what you’re looking for.”
“The way gin is made, most distilleries and distillers will approach their process the same way as crafting a perfume. If you were to take a perfume that had everything in there, you’d find that it wouldn’t smell nice.”
Much like with perfume, when creating a gin, distillers need to have a clear understanding of what each botanical contributes to the overall aroma and taste. Often we’ll find that distillers like to experiment with different ingredients and processes to achieve unique flavour profiles. But too many ingredients can clash, creating a less enjoyable product – just like an overly complicated perfume might be off-putting.
“Often it’s an understanding of how to use those botanicals. Part of this is understanding the craft and what gin is.”
Krystal Hart, Diageo World Class Bartending Competition Ambassador
Distillation Process
Archie Rose Distillery’s signature gin uses 14 carefully selected botanicals, 100% originating from NSW. Whilst standard gin makers offering more affordable options will tend to distil all their ingredients and botanicals at once, the Australian brand employs a thoughtful process where botanicals are distilled separately before being blended.
It’s a time-consuming process, but one that produces a product where every botanical is in its rightful place, ensuring that each botanical comes through in the award-winning final product.
The process for the Scottish-made Tanqueray is also very similar: For their standard gin offering which retails around the $25 mark, all of the botanicals are macerated in and distilled just once in the production process.
If you take Tanqueray No. 10 which is the brand’s premium offering at the $60 mark, you’ll find full fresh citrus botanicals, distilled individually in separate stills. Tanqueray’s “core DNA” is then added, before it’s back-blended with the final mix.
“It’s a more laborious and arduous process that can absolutely mark up price,” explains Hart.
The gin-making process can then get even more expensive if distillers are sourcing ingredients from overseas or getting creative with their blends.
“Most Australian manufacturers will purchase their junipers from Macedonia and the difference between that produce and Bulgaria’s can affect the aroma and the taste,” says Hart. “If they’re doing things like introducing cucumber, you need to create a really clever production process to extract cucumber.”
A complex gin blend may sound impressive, but it’s the skill and precision in selecting and balancing botanicals that determine the overall quality. Complexity for its own sake is no substitute for a thoughtful and well-crafted gin.
Rarity & Availability
It’s a fact that gin can be produced a lot faster and cheaper than whisky which has been flooding the market. That’s not to say that there’s no rarity in gin – it’s just not on the same scale as whisky. But of course, gin isn’t aged in the same way as whiskies.
It’s a fresh distillate that requires a small rest period which will only last a couple of weeks after the initial production. Some gins do barrel-aged versions.
Rarity in gin is instead achieved through the difficult-to-source ingredients used which can affect the gin’s final price.
“From my own experience with rare ingredients, you’re bound by small seasons. You may only be able to do certain amounts in certain periods,” says Withers. “But if you’re going to go for rare ingredients, the actual flavour has to pay off for the rarity of those ingredients.”
“There’s no point distilling gold leaf just because it’s rare. It won’t taste like anything. It has to stand up to the price point you’re commanding.”
Dave Withers
Then there’s of course what Hart calls “expression-driven gins hitting the market.” Which, in layman’s terms, is typically higher-proof gins that use rarer and harder-to-source ingredients. They’re not your everyday drops. Instead, these gins will be targeting enthusiasts with a more discerning palate.
Simple Marketing
Finally, there’s the aspect of discretionary marketing – or the price at which a gin makers value their product. The average gin drinker will look for gins that they’ve tried in a bar and those bottles usually sit around the AU$70 to $80 mark.
Hart explains that gins in the AU$30 to $50 range can still be fantastic quality even though they’re cheaper: “They’ve been producing it for so long that they’re able to do it efficiently and at a lower cost versus more of these new expression-led gins hitting the market.”
And it’s these new wave gins that are using rare botanicals and taking longer to make that allow them to sit at the pricier end.