Elephant Gin: a cure for the Heart of Darkness

I first encountered Elephant Gin at a pop-up German-themed bar in the basement
of Herman Ze German restaurant in Charlotte Street during London Cocktail
Week last October. You can see that this is bottle 564 from a batch named after an
elephant called Igor. The glass shows that this is a gin to be sipped and
savoured; the lid is there to keep in the precious aromas, I was told

In a crowded marketplace gins increasingly seem to be using a quirky back-story, unusual botanicals or some other gimmick to grab our attention. Elephant Gin is the second German gin I’ve tried in recent months and, like Monkey 47, it has an animal theme. But where Monkey 47 uses botanicals from the Black Forest region where it is made, Elephant is actually all about Africa. And where the monkey in question was an individual called Max from a zoo, Elephant Gin is named after the whole species—in fact 15% of the profits are donated to two charities that work to protect African elephants from ivory poaching. Having said that, each batch of 800 bottles is named after a particular elephant that one of the charities has helped, so every label has the name and number handwritten on it.

This is how the gin is presented, hankering after the Golden Age of exploration

The makers were apparently inspired by their own travels in the continent, and the imagery is designed to evoke the Victorian heyday of exploration, with a front label reminiscent an old postage stamp (featuring an elephant clutching a bottle of gin in its trunk) and a vintage map on the back label. The bottle is specially made, stoppered with natural cork and decorated with twine and an embossed seal, and does feel like something taken on safari. Of course Europeans in the Victorian era did not exactly treat the Dark Continent with reverence, and would have been more likely to bag elephants as trophies than protect them, but perhaps the gin is an attempt to make amends for the colonial past…

Unsurprisingly, the 14 botanicals include a number from Africa: citric baobab from Malawi (boasting more vitamin C than oranges, it says here, though how much of that survives into the gin I don’t know), bitter floral African Wormwood, devil’s claw, said to have healing properties, blackcurrant-like buchu and herbaceous lion’s tail, all from South Africa. In this respect the product has more in common with Whitley Neill, another African-inspired gin that also uses baobab (and also gives some of its profits to African charities). Elephant also uses fresh apples from an orchard near the distillery outside Hamburg, which slightly confuses the image, plus elderflower, ginger, pimento, lavender and pine needles from the Salzburger Mountains, as well as the more conventional cassia and sweet orange peel, plus juniper, of course.

It’s clear that this gin is not just about gimmickry—it would have been easy to use a tried-and-tested set of botanicals then add one or two token African elements. But the fact that there are so many unusual ingredients, plus an absence of many typical gin botanicals, such as coriander, orris or angelica, shows that the whole thing has been put together from the ground up and the botanical selection is all about the flavour.

Even the 10cl sample bottle mimics the style and
quality of the full-size vessel

The botanicals are handpicked and macerated for 24 hours. It’s a one-shot distillation (as opposed to multi-shot, where a botanically intense “concentrate” is produced which is then diluted down with alcohol)* with a relatively small “heart” of the distillate selected for use (i.e. the best bit—the first liquid out of a pot still is discarded, as is the last, and how much of the central cut you use is a balance of quality against cost). The gin is diluted with local spring water down to 45% ABV. The end result is not cheap, at around £30 for just 50cl. (My sample is only 10cl, so I wasn’t able to try it in many different serves.)

The first thing I get on sniffing the bottle is a floral, marshmallow sweetness combined with a juiciness. (How a smell can be juicy is hard to say—I expect it reminds me of fruit that I know to be juicy.) There is warm ginger, zingy, sherbet citrus, blackcurrant, earthy spice. It’s an elegant, perfumed, structured aroma, but quite subtle. It is sweetish on the tongue, and smooth for a 45% gin, with fruit interplaying with herbaceous notes, the impression of sweetness fencing with dry spice and a tweak of bitterness on the tip of your tongue. It doesn’t strike me as particularly juniper-driven.

Some of the seals say "Made in Germany" while others
show a Zulu shield and spears, and the date 1802, an
emblem that is also moulded into the bottle. This
commemorates the year that botanist Heinrich Stark
mounted an important expedition. I can't find out much
about him, though

As it happens I have some Whitley Neill to hand so I try it for comparison. It is much more juniper-dominated on the nose; on the palate it is also sweet and fruity, but more stern and muscular. Elephant is considerably softer and more delicate.

Add a bit of tonic water (but not too much) and the character remains broadly the same, though for the first time I get a taste of apple, joining the sweet citrus and dry, perfumed spice. But Elephant Gin won’t take too much tonic water before its subtleties are swamped. (By comparison Whitley Neill is well adapted to a G&T with its strong juniper element making its presence easily felt.) The prescribed garnish is a slice of apple and it does go well, slotting in easily with the gin’s own flavours.** Finally, I try one of the recommended cocktails, the White Tusk (a version of the White Lady): 50ml Elephant Gin, 15ml lemon juice, 10ml Cointreau, 10ml sugar syrup and 10ml egg white. It is dominated by sweetness and the orange flavour of the Cointreau, but the gin’s own characteristics do seep through; I’m tempted to describe them as appley but it may just be the apple garnish from the last drink making me think that way.

* Proponents of single-shot distillation evidently feel that multi-shot is a compromise that sacrifices quality. However, m’colleague DBS conducted a test recently, with the help of Anne Brock from Jensen, where they made various gin batches using single- and multi-shot techniques and blind tasted them. Broadly speaking the result was that the single-shot samples were not preferred to the rest. See the report at http://distilling.uberflip.com/i/622468-distiller-winter-16/91.

** All new gins seem to have to come with a prescribed garnish—and this is never something normal like a slice of lemon. (Nor is it ever recommended that no garnish is necessary.) It seems that this is viewed as an essential part of establishing the product’s character and place in the market. I have a bit of a suspicion of garnishes in general—I feel that if the product doesn’t taste at its best without the added flavour of the garnish, then why not make it with that flavour in it to start off with? (OK, I accept that, for example, the taste of a slice of fresh apple probably can’t be replicated by macerating apple in the spirit then distilling it, even with cold, vacuum distillation.) Generally speaking the prescribed garnish is usually one of the gin’s botanicals anyway. Likewise, my suspicions—and my hackles—are raised in a bar when I am presented with a cocktail that has a small tree sprouting from the top, frequently rendering it almost impossible to drink without poking your eye out. If the vessel is also something opaque, like a bamboo log or hollowed-out monkey skull, then between that and the plug of garnish you find that you can’t actually see the liquid you are drinking, which I find disconcerting. Recently I was served a cocktail with a smouldering cinnamon stick balanced horizontally across the top. WTF? Even the barman seemed a bit sheepish about this, since you couldn’t pick the glass up without the stick rolling off, and if it didn’t then it would probably burn you (or set fire to your moustache if you had one). In case you’re wondering, burning cinnamon smoke does smell lightly of cinnamon (I’ve just set fire to a cinnamon stick to check), so I’m sure this aroma was supposed to be part of the experience, but I don’t remember being able to pick up on this at the time.