Irish gins still mixing it up

Despite expectations that the bubble would burst, gins are more popular than ever, with new ones popping up across the country. Why is the classic G&T so rejuvenated? asks Leslie Williams.

It’s impossible to keep up. Gin (and especially gin and tonic) is the most on-trend drink in the country and it has been for the last three years.

I predicted that we had hit peak gin a year ago, but they keep on coming and the good news is the category continues to surprise.

At the Whiskey Live event in Dublin Castle recently there were almost as many people asking about gin as whiskey.

David Havelin, who recently launched the excellent Chinnery Gin, told me that at the event, “Everyone was asking why I created it and why should they be interested in a new gin. It’s good that we have to demonstrate we went the extra mile and didn’t just order a bunch of botanicals from a catalogue and send the recipe to a random distillery and draft in a branding agency.”

It’s true, Chinnery uses Chinese Osmanthus flowers and Oolong tea to invoke the Chinoiserie style of the painter George Chinnery who gave his name to the gin. Such creativity is great to see and it is also good to see that Ireland’s gin drinkers are willing to go a little further than the usual Hendricks and cucumber.

Pat McGrath

Take the Ross Hotel in Killarney as another good example. In 2015 operations manager Pat McGrath and general manager Ciara Tracey were discussing a new bar area to add a bit of glamour to the five-star hotel and perhaps add a bit of differentiation to the other five-star hotels in Killarney.

“Initially we were just planning a private function room but we wanted a focus and I thought ‘why not a gin bar?’ We opened in November 2015 with 19 gins and now have over 70, and we are not done yet,” says McGrath.

The Pink Lounge also has a choice of around 20 tonics and 36 garnishes from blackberries to jalapeño, pineapple to thyme. Best of all you can choose your glass — balloon goblets are there, of course, along with a selection of highball glasses and crystal cut tumblers (my preference).

Patrick McGrath, The Ross Hotel, Killarney, creates his special christmas gin and tonic.

The Pink Lounge is, as you might expect, a glorious study in pink but this is no frivolous fluffy bar, there is serious creativity on its cocktail menu with every Irish classic gin in stock (Gunpowder, Blackwater No 5, Bertha’s Revenge), but also world classics such as Plymouth and Tanqueray Rangpur; modern classics such as Sipsmith, Bruichladdich’s The Botanist, Aviation from Portland, Oregon, and, of course, Monkey 47 from the Black Forest in Germany which has 47 botanicals.

Dingle Gin was one of the first gins we sourced and I love its herbaceous style and the fact that it uses local rowanberries, bog myrtle, hawthorn — it tastes of the Kerry landscape. We were also one of the first in the country to serve Gunpowder Gin — I got hold of (founder) Pat Rigney’s mobile number and begged and cajoled him to send me some of his very first batch.

The success of the Pink Lounge and in particular the success of the new wave of Irish gins set McGrath thinking about taking it to the next level.

“On a wet winter Tuesday, five of us piled into a car and made our way to Listoke Distillery and Gin School just outside Drogheda. We learned all we could about the process and set to making our own using their micro-stills. We created four recipes that day — a spicy one packed with ginger; a fun bubblegum one with mint, orange, and vanilla; a Christmas one with lots of anise and mint; and finally a floral style with grapefruit, basil, and rose petal.

“We hurried home with our samples and messed around with mixers, garnishes, and glass shapes until we were happy and then tested our creations with 25 members of staff. The floral gin (44% ABV) was a clear winner with 20 out of 25 votes and Ross Gin was born.”

McGrath is rightly cagey about the exact recipe but he will admit to jasmine, rose, and honeysuckle with some basil, grapefruit, spice, and heft added in the form of grains of paradise, coriander, and cassia bark with the lynchpin of Juniper.

“We went with a light floral gin with a touch of sweetness, but most of all elegance — just like our clients!” quips McGrath.

In keeping with the floral theme Ross Gin is usually paired with Schweppes 1783 Elderflower Tonic although some customers sometimes stick with their favourite Poachers or Fever Tree.

Other popular gin cocktails at the Pink Lounge include the Tom Collins and the Ross 75 (adapted from the classic French 75) which is 50ml Gin, 20ml St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, 35ml lemon juice, shaken and topped with Champagne and a twist of grapefruit.

Another popular (and suitably pink) cocktail is McGrath’s own creation which won him a silver medal in the 2014 National Cocktail competition — Away with the Fairies —Bombay Sapphire, Chambourd Raspberry Liqueur, St Germain, and fresh lime.

And what of the future? McGrath believes new gins will keep on coming for a while yet but “the quality will always rise to the top”.

Gin will always have a core place in the bar but McGrath predicts rum might be next: “Rum will touch off the diversity of flavours just as gin does.” Irish whiskey will continue to grow, he believes, but this will also create space for other brown drinks.

www.theross.ie

Oisín Davis

Mention creative cocktails to anyone in the drinks trade in Ireland and one name that usually comes up is Oisín Davis.

I had to call Davis to get his views on the “gin boom” (his words).

“When the gin boom was first getting noticed in 2016 I was at a drinks symposium and I hate to admit it, but I and everyone else on the panel declared that it would implode by end of year. We were all completely wrong — gin fever has strengthened and boomed even more since then.”

Davis is helping to keep it all afloat with his Poachers range of Irish tonics which come in three varieties: Poachers Classic which is sharp and fresh, with a good kick of quinine and some thyme to accentuate the spices. Next is Poachers Citrus Tonic which won two stars at the Great Taste Awards (no other tonic came close), and Poachers Wild Tonic with wild elderflower sourced from Brooklodge Hotel in Wicklow, which works well with fruity or floral gins or ones with a lemon touch. Poachers also have plans to launch a ginger beer.

Davis came to people’s notice when he was the barman in the Sugar Club in Dublin and writing in the Irish Times Ticket magazine about food and cocktails.

Oisín Davis, Great Irish Beverages, makes his own concoction.

When I first met him, he was using techniques based on those developed by Frran Adria in his legendary Molecular Gastronomy restaurant El Bulli.

These days Davis runs drinks festivals through his company Great Irish Beverages such as the Irish Cocktail Month which ran in bars all over Ireland.

The Grand Hotel in Fermoy won best cocktail during the festival, with a complicated gin cocktail (of course) made using Blackwater No 5 Gin, honey bitters (with Fermoy honey), lemon, lime, tonic, egg white, and Calendula flowers.

So why are we obsessed with gin?

“It’s simple,” says Davis, “Gin and tonic is a perfectly, balanced drink — it does so much for your taste buds, it is just so harmonious.

It is both bitter and sweet and then add in the supplemental flavours from the spices, the flowers, and other botanicals which all combine to create a rich riot of flavour in the mouth. Physiologically it is also the perfect drink, the effervescence allows all the flavour notes to mix and give that crucial (often overlooked) bonus of mouthfeel — the oily spirit and the fizz mixed with the bitter and the sweet and driven by the fizz.”

So will it continue? “Yes,” says Davis. “Even the smallest bar has a list of gins and tonics to choose from and at our Irish Gin and Tonic Festival every October, the Irish gins always outsell the imported.

Tourists seek out Irish gins and they should be supported, especially those that have created proper quality juice in beautiful bottles like Chinnery, Ornabrak, and Gunpowder.”