Ian Buxton - Gin: The Ultimate Companion: The Essential Guide to Flavours, Brands, Cocktails, Tonics and More

T he biggest thanks go to all the distillers, all around the world, whose energy, enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit has made this book possible. And to you for buying, drinking and supporting their products and for buying this book!

At a personal level, Id like to thank the long-suffering but ever patient Mrs Buxton for mopping my increasingly fevered brow during the production of yet another book. To be honest, I wasnt sure if I was pushing it, but shes taken up online bridge, so I think I may have got away with it.

The team of Judy Moir (agent), Andrew Simmons (managing editor), Alison Rae (editor) and Teresa Monachino (designer) have done a great job grateful and fulsome thanks to all of them. And to Abigail Salvesen for the jacket design. Together they have helped more than they know.

To the excellent team at Fever-Tree Drinks, many thanks for the use of photography and the handy pairing wheel, and particularly to Craig Harper and Jaz Arwand for your support and creativity with Buxtons Bucket of Blood and Grannys Ruin.

Finally, please support the distillers large and small, bars and off-licences with your credit cards! Especially now, because they need your money more than ever. And absolutely finally, consider buying another copy of the book for a friend, because I do too. Cheers!

Photography

All bottle pictures come courtesy of the relevant distillery or brand owner and are their copyright property, reproduced here with permission. Other copyright permissions are as follows: inside front and back cover, Bluecoat American Dry Gin; pp. , Fever-Tree.

	58 GIN
Distillery:	329 Acton Mews, London
Website:	www.58gin.com
Visitor Centre:	Yes
Strength:	43%

W hen I first encountered this in early 2015, it was probably the UKs newest gin brand and I knew at once that it had to go into a book. Its still around and going from strength to strength, so 58 stands as a great example of the new wave of small operations who have found a gap in the market. It typifies how gin is changing and why its the most exciting thing on the world spirits scene right now.

Originally, it was the brainchild of a genial Aussie, Mark Marmont, an avid cocktail lover who, after a year of trials, lots of distilling courses and, as he says himself, trial and error, launched 58 making just sixty to seventy bottles of gin at a time in a tiny copper pot still in a railway arch in Hackney Downs, one of the trendier parts of London. Since then, as I was informed by a robotically-voiced PR person in tones that did not invite further enquiry, Mark has exited the business and left the industry.

However, we all move on, and 58 has now relocated to a new, larger home (albeit another railway arch) in Haggerston, also a seriously hip location. The current operation places great stress on their ethical operation and a mission to be the category leader in sustainable craft spirits. To that end, they work closely with a Kent farm to source ingredients, they offset their carbon footprint by planting juniper bushes, and use the waste botanicals for compost, in a full green circle they term ethical distilling. Naturally, the packaging is eco-friendly, using recycled glass bottles and providing the on-trade with refill pouches to minimise waste.

This isnt unique, but it is the future and a great example of responsible industry that we should all encourage, support and emulate. The approach is also behind some great products, so much so that 58 collected no less than eight awards at the 2020 International Wine & Spirit Competition, including UK Gin Producer of the Year. Thats a very respectable haul from a competition judged blind by industry experts.

Just as the distillery has expanded, so has the range. As well as their flagship London Dry, look out for 58s Apple and Hibiscus, English Berry and Navy Strength variants.

I just hope Marks okay because he was fun to chat with and not unbearably woke.

	ACHROOUS
Distillery:	The Tower Street Stillhouse, Leith, Edinburgh
Website:	www.electricspirit.co/gin
Visitor Centre:	No
Strength:	41%

I n the Scotland of my long-lost youth there was a beverage known as Electric Soup. Originally said to consist of milk with natural gas bubbled through it, it was the drink of down-and-outs and neer-dowells the sort of backdoor voddie Rab C. Nesbitt might resort to on a particularly bad day.

So, Electric Spirit seems a curious name for a distillery in Leith, an area which has in recent years attained yuppie status by means of some muscular regeneration (i.e. the wholesale demolition of much of the old townscape to be replaced by bland designer flats and a soulless shopping complex). Leith was once the haunt of thirsty sailors on shore leave and legions of accommodating ladies of the night. Today, its all Michelin star-aspiring foodie restaurants, trendy bars and distraught Hibs fans clinging to fading memories of the 2016 Scottish Cup Final, with just a hint of the tantalising possibility of imminent random violence to remind one of the Leith of old. Even Hibs win things from time to time these days but as their hardened fans bitterly observe, its the hope that kills you.

But the Electric Spirit folks are no shrinking violets, otherwise why put their gin in a day-glo orange bottle (glance left if you dont believe me) and name it Achroous? Thats not some strange Scottish war cry, by the way; its derived from the Ancient Greek for colourless, which of course it is. To their eternal credit, they once produced a one-off release called Not Another Effing Gin. Believe me, writing about gin thats something I can acknowledge with feeling.

Electric Spirit are at the cutting edge of a vibrant Scottish craft-distilling scene, and product designer, photographer and distiller James Porteous has worked with juniper, coriander seed, orris root, liquorice root, angelica root, fennel seed and, most notably, Sichuan peppercorns to offer up this most distinctive spiced and complex gin, with attractive citrus and floral notes. Right from their 2015 launch, it sold well, allowing Electric Spirit to move to larger premises and acquire a bigger Genio still.

The Tower Street Stillhouse also produces the Port of Leith Distillerys excellent Lind & Lime gin, but to prove really good things come from here, I point you to Achroous medal collection: Double Gold from the San Francisco World Spirits Awards, a 96pt Gold from the IWSC and Gold from the Spirits Business Global Gin Masters.