THE DEFINITION OF A CONNOISSEUR
Have you ever listened to someone talk about ‘nosing’ a gin? Or read the words of an expert pontificating about the ‘mouthfeel’ of a gin or how the finish was short/medium/long? And that’s before they even start to talk about the nuances of key botanicals. Chances are you are in the company of a gin connoisseur.
The definition of a connoisseur is ‘an expert judge in matters of taste’. And if that sounds a little daunting then take heart. You don’t have to be a connoisseur to fully appreciate the kaleidoscopic flavours of gin.
All you need to fully appreciate gin is your nose, your taste buds and a little practice. By the end of this chapter, you will be if not a connoisseur then confident in your ability to judge a gin for yourself.
BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
To start, choose a gin you like. This might seem like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, but you will be more attentive to the following if you choose a gin you already have a fondness for.
Next, pour a small amount of your favourite gin neat into a small balloon glass. A red wine glass will also do. Make sure the gin and the glass are at room temperature.
Fat Legs vs Thin Legs
Before you begin to taste your gin give it a swirl around the glass. If the liquid clinging to the sides of your glass looks oily with big fat ‘tears’ running down the side then you know the gin is going to be big on flavour and packed with botanicals. A thin liquid that runs easily down the glass indicates a lighter spirit.
So: ‘Fat legs’ = big flavour. ‘Thin legs’ = lighter flavour. ‘Skinny legs’ = you’re drinking vodka.
NOSING YOUR GIN
It’s an odd thing to say, but professionals in the gin industry really do talk about nosing gin when all they really mean is sniffing it. But that doesn’t sound quite so elegant, does it? Before you can properly taste gin, you have to nose it first. Like you would nose wine or whisky before you go on to taste it.
To avoid looking like a complete noseless amateur there is a right way and a wrong way to nose your gin. Forget swirling your gin round and round your glass as you would wine. Gin is a spirit and has a much higher alcohol content than wine, which is generally around 11–14% ABV. The stronger alcohol content in gin means you can’t plunge straight in with a wine connoisseur’s great sniff after swirling your gin round your balloon glass. To do so would anaesthetise your sense of smell.
First let the gin settle from your swirling to check out the legs of the gin. Then take a small sniff – think genteel old lady sniffs. Continue to take small sniffs and each time you sniff you will appreciate different aromas coming off the gin until you have a pretty good aroma map of your chosen gin.
A Whiff of Juniper
Ask yourself is it floral, herbal, citrus, piney, spicy? Like perfume, every gin will have its signature aroma. One that will hopefully be consistent from batch to batch. Some notes will be dominant. You may get a pungent whiff of juniper, which tells you that the gin is a juniper-forward gin (more of that later). But there will also be other notes accompanying the juniper.
Perfume is not one particular scent but a combination. And therein lies the perfumier’s skill. Gin is the same. In time you will know a good gin just by nosing it.
80% of Taste is Aroma
Why is nosing gin so important? Why not just get straight in there and start tasting it? Well, 80% of what you taste is aroma. Yes, a whopping 80% of what we taste comes from smell. Your taste perception is mostly smell.
To further explain, there is something called retronasal olfaction. This means that while you are eating or drinking there are aromas emanating from your mouth, or oral cavity, which contribute to the taste of your food or drink. The aroma molecules are going in by the back door, via your throat and up into the nasal cavity. Sneaky little aroma molecules!
Sniffing, or orthonasal olfaction, does something different. The aroma molecules go straight up into your nasal cavity. Therefore, it is important to nose your gin first to distinguish between the two. Combine them together by taking a sip and you have a full flavour map of your gin.
Add in a garnish or two and you can see how difficult it gets to pinpoint those pesky flavours.
TREATING YOUR TASTE BUDS RIGHT
So retronasal olfaction is working hard. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore your taste buds.
Everyone has them. Look in the bathroom mirror and stick your tongue out. See those little red bumps on your tongue? Those are your taste buds.
Imagine life without those little red bumps on your tongue. Imagine a life without the senses of taste or smell. Hard to imagine, yes? So you need to treat your taste buds right. Smoking taints and dulls your sense of taste. Similarly, eating garlic or strong spicy foods before you drink gin will also affect your sense of taste.
To best taste gin your palate needs to be neutral. And you need to be neither hungry nor full. Similarly, if you have a cold, not only will your sense of smell be affected – and remember 80% of taste is aroma – but your taste buds won’t be at their most receptive.
HOW TO TASTE
Just like nosing your gin, where you don’t take great sniffs, when tasting your gin you don’t take a big greedy gulp. Take small sips. Think genteel old lady again, but this time sipping sherry. Try to press the gin to the roof of your palate with your tongue to get the maximum all round flavour and help with that retronasal olfaction. Try it first neat. Then add a drop of water and taste again. Just a drop mind. You don’t want to dilute your gin too much.
THE BIG FIVE
There are five basic tastes that your taste buds will pick up: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami or savoury. Easy enough to remember if you count them on your fingers. Your first impression of a gin will be one of these five. Often a gin is predominantly one but with the addition of another. Well-made gins are quite complex – and unravelling the complexity is what makes tasting gin fun.
MOUTHFEEL
After your initial impression of which of the big five your gin is, we move on to the mouthfeel. Remember earlier we talked about the look of gin in the glass. If the gin has fat legs and looks slightly oily then it will have a big mouthfeel. If the gin has thin legs then the mouthfeel will be light.
Similarly, does it have a smooth feel? Some gins can be almost creamy. Smoothness is an indication that the gin is well made. If the gin is rough it won’t be so well made. We all have at least one memory of bringing back home a bottle of duty-free spirit that tasted so good when we were on holiday on a sun-drenched beach. Only to get back home and find the same spirit made our eyes water and the back of our throat burn. Bad gin can be like that, too.
JUNIPER, JUNIPER ALL THE WAY
Once you are decided on which of the big five your gin is and you have a good idea of the mouthfeel you will start to pick up other flavours. Remember everyone’s taste experience is different. So don’t worry if you read that a gin is dominant in say ‘asparagus’ and when you taste it you can only taste ‘peas’ (I’m joking here, but you get the point).
Hopefully, though you will taste juniper. In fact, juniper should be the dominant flavour. Contemporary gins have pushed the boundaries of gin to its very junipery limits, almost to the point where some gins don’t appear to have any juniper in them at all. But to be classed as gin the dominant flavour must be juniper.
If the juniper is particularly strong we say the gin is juniper-forward. Simply put it means the juniper makes itself quite obvious at the start of the tasting. You don’t have to go looking for it.
OTHER FLAVOURS
After juniper, you will hopefully be picking up other flavours. Remember how big a part aroma plays in taste? Well, this is where it can get confusing.
For example, when someone says a gin is floral, they are really talking about the aroma. Floral is not a flavour. And most flowers are quite bitter anyway. If you don’t believe me pop out to your garden and nibble on a rose petal. But it is quite difficult to separate aroma from flavour and this makes it difficult for anyone to really nail down those flavours.
Ask yourself, is the gin herbal, spicy, citrusy or ‘floral’ as well as piney? Or is it a combination of two or more? After juniper, most gins will have another quite dominant flavour. This will be their signature botanical. You will discover in time that you get more adept at picking out these subtle nuances of flavour.
For instance, cassia bark is a good one to pick out. The strong cinnamon taste is warming and can in some gins be quite strident. If a gin has cassia bark as one of its botanicals then the distiller has included it for a reason. It lends a warm spiciness to gin and can extend the finish (see below). Gins with cassia bark in them tend to have more weight and punch.
THE FINISH
Finally, we come to the finish. Experts will talk about the gin having a short, medium or long finish. This just means the length of time the flavour lasts in your mouth. Does it linger or is it forgotten quite quickly? Does it leave a warming spicy impression? A citrus zing? A mellow herbal note? Floral perfumery? Or all-out juniperiness?
A QUICK TASTING CHECKLIST
Pour yourself a glass of your favourite gin and ask yourself the following questions:
Are the ‘legs’…?
Fat
Thin
Somewhere in between
Is the aroma…?
Piney
Spicy
Citrus
Floral
Herbal
Can you detect any scent in particular? Vanilla or rose, for example?
On tasting, which of the ‘big five’ is most evident?
Sweet
Sour
Bitter
Salty
Umami
What is the mouthfeel like?
Big
Medium
Light
Smooth
Rough
What is the strength of the juniper?
Strong
Medium
Weak
What other flavours are coming through? Can you detect some of the botanicals?
Spicy
Citrus
Floral
Herbal
Is the finish…?
Short
Medium
Long
CONCLUSION
So this chapter will hopefully have helped debunk some of the jargon floating about around gin and now you will feel more confident when tasting gin. Try to feel confident in your judgement at deciding if you like a particular gin or not. Remember, everyone’s taste and sense of aroma is different. There are no right or wrong gins out there and it is up to you to choose which ones you would like to have in your gin cabinet.
So who exactly invented gin as we know it? And where did it come from? The Dutch would have you believe it was they who founded the whole modern gin phenomenon. The Belgians would disagree. But all would agree that the use of juniper in medicine happily segued into a juniper-avoured spirit some time in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
1568 ~ Initially, production of genever, the forerunner of modern gin, was centred on the Low Countries with the focus on Antwerp. The Low Countries was a region encompassing modern Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, parts of northern France and western Germany. Religious persecution by the Spanish beginning in 1568 at the start of the Eighty Years War
shifted production away from Antwerp and predominantly up into the Netherlands, with wave after wave of refugee artisan distillers.
1575 A family of refugees called Bulsius arrived in Amsterdam. Changing their name to Bols they established a dynasty of distillers of genever, which continues to the present day.
1602 ~ The Dutch East India Company (VOC) received their charter and access to the world’s spice trade ensured the flourishing diversity of spirit production. Thanks to the VOC, Amsterdam became the centre of world trade with genever rapidly becoming one of its lucrative exports.