Update from the Lab..#6 Eastern Promise Gin - Update with Tasting Notes!

It's amazing what you can learn on Twitter. Today alone, I've learnt that some folks are aeging gin for over ten years and that one of their varieties is bottled at a heady 67.4% ABV! But perhaps the most interesting conversation today led me to a little experiment. One tweeter is off on holiday to Turkey and I suggested they look out for Gin Istanbul (a juniper spirit made in the country that spans two continents). This led to a lighthearted comment by the Gin Monkey that she imagined it would taste like Turkish Delight. After some discussion on the merits of this, I am proud to present:

Sipsmith Turkish Delight Gin

I decided to use Sipsmith as it a very characterful gin, with a heavy dose of juniper; therefore, it should stand up to the sweet rose flavours of the confection.
I also decided to use powdered sugar Turkish Delight (Sultan's), rather than the chocolate covered variety (Fry's); I thought that the addition of chocolate would be too much and is perhaps an experiment for another day.

Recipe
#1) Remove the powdered sugar from the Turkish Delight (lest the gin be too sweet)*
#2) Cut the Turkish Delight into smaller pieces; this increases the surface area (a point that I'm sure is not lost on the plethora of biologists that read this site).**
#3) Add Turkish Delight to a pot/jam jar (I used 4 pieces)
#4) Add Sipsmith Gin (200ml)***
#5) Wait... (For about 24 hours)
#6) Strain, I just used a tea strainer and I discarded the last 10% from my bottling as it had a heavy sediment.

I only started this today, so it's not ready yet, but rest assured that, when it is, you will receive an update, and an Eastern Promise Martini will be yours for the making.

The Long-awaited Results!

Own:
Nose: certainly of rose with a slight gelatinous quality (maybe by association rather than anything else) as well as juniper and citrus.
Taste: Initially sweet rose and then the dry more bitter notes from the gin, juniper and coriander. Medium to long finish of juniper and Turkish Delight. I'm please to say it wasn't too sweet and that the flavour really comes through.

The gin-soaked Turkish delight pieces were rather tasty although incredibly intense, I'm glad I had Mrs B. to help me eat them.

Gin & Tonic
Although the gin is a light yellow in the bottle with tonic it becomes ever so slightly pink. In this drink the flavour of the gin is much more subtle, but it is still there. It is as if some mysterious beauty had just softly brushed your arm and you've taken in a waft of her perfume.**** But it is more delicate and quite intriguing.

Martini
A light parchment yellow, the flavours of Turkish delight come over well, I can imagine this would be very similar to Will's marvelous creation. Possibly my favourite way to drink the Turkish Delight Gin.

* You could do this by licking the sugar off, but I decided to rinse it with filtered water instead—just as effective and probably less offensive.
** Turkish Delight is notoriously difficult to cut up, so be careful and, if you're having trouble, ask an adult to help you.
*** Other gins are available. I imagine something like SW4 would also work well.
**** I guess this suggests that they've been dabbing Sultan's (or gin) behind their ears?

Not only here for the beer: spirits from Adnams

Anyone with a still seems to be chucking out a gin at the moment, but I was surprised to hear recently that Adnams, brewers of fine Suffolk ales since 1872, had also now produced a range of vodkas and gins. I shouldn’t have been, really—their premium spirits are made from exactly the same grains as their beer, a mixture of locally sourced barley, wheat and oats. Even though they’ve had to have a still installed—a copper one, for they too subscribe to the cult of copper—it’s all part of the process. So are they bandwagon-jumping or do they have something to bring to the party?

Let’s start with Adnams Copper House Barley Vodka (40% ABV). It’s made from East Anglian malted barley, brewed into a wash at 6% ABV without hops, then distilled. They describe it as “beautifully smooth…with a natural sweetness”, but to me it has a keen nose with a hint of dry sherry. The palate does have cream, by comparison with mass-produced vodkas, but compared to other premium vodkas I’ve had recently it tends more towards fruit and minerals—this is a characterful drink. Indeed Adnams describe it as having “plenty of character from our handmade copper pot still”. I couldn’t say if that is where the flavours come from but if I line it up with some others I have to hand—SW4*, Sipsmith, Chase and Indiana—it seems to have oranges, grapes and even cherries going on. Sipsmith and SW4 are also made from barley but their styles are quite different. If you’re after a vodka that is all about creamy smoothness and nectar sweetness, then this probably isn’t the one for you, but my curiosity has been well and truly piqued.

Next up is Longshore, a vodka bottled at 48% ABV, made from the more complicated three-grain blend and a finer “cut”—taking just the choice middle section of the distillation batch. And what a difference it is. If the Copper House barley vodka has an edgy, fruity character, this vodka smells like a meringue, rich and sweet. But on the palate it still has a family resemblance to the first one—rather than the unctuous smoothness of Sipsmith it has a distinctly citrus-cream fruity flavour with hints of wood. It tastes like a wooden crate that was used to store oranges.

As a relative vodka novice I’ve been astonished by the variety of flavours you can get from this basic recipe. The Chase potato vodka, for instance is vinous on the nose with a smooth palate and a hint of pears. So what will we make of the third Adnams offering—North Cove Oak-Aged Vodka, a version of their Longshore that is bottled at 50% ABV after sitting in oak barrels? (The sample that I have spent a month in a mix of French and American oak though I’m told the production version will use just European barrels.) As soon as you stick your nose in the glass you really can smell the wood, and not just a general “woodiness” but actual sawn planks. Then comes the buttery, vanilla richness, familiar from oak-aged wine. Adnams suggest coconut too, and it is there, in a coconut-matting kind of way. On the palate again a strong wood character—probably too much for some—giving it an edge almost like red wine. You can imagine this vodka pairing well with food, such as smoked salmon; this, or perhaps the lighter vodkas, might be a good match with sushi.

To me this whole range has a striking fruit character. The oak-aged one has elements of prunes and marmalade, but even the basic barley vodka has it too. The next morning I smell all the empty tasting glasses and, while Indiana, SW4, Sipsmith and Chase have no residual aroma to speak of, all of the Adnams range do, especially the oak-aged, though less so the Longshore. When we tried them all together I got the impression that DBS was most keen on SW4, followed by Indiana and Sipsmith. I think they’re excellent too, but I have to say I’m taken by the forthright character of the Adnams range.

The family also includes two gins, the Distilled Gin made from the barley vodka and First Rate gin made from the Longshore vodka. The Distilled Gin has six botanicals, featuring sweet orange peel and hibiscus flower, plus juniper, cardamom, coriander seed and orris. This sweet, floral approach is very much of the moment. Berry Bros. No.3 gin is specifically intended for Martinis and also includes sweet orange peel in its spartan botanical list: I assume the sweetness is there to make it more palatable served more or less neat.

Certainly there is juniper and citrus straightaway and a pronounced floral aroma. I don’t really know what hibiscus tastes/smells of but here there is a sweetness and a hint of blackcurrants too. This perfumed character reminds me slightly of soap, though I guess that is more a comment on how we choose to fragrance our toiletries than on the gin. On the palate overall it’s again about sweet orange, flowers and also gingerbread. Plus a smidgen of geranium. Diluted by half with water, it maintains this character, though I get a whiff of strawberries too.

First Rate gin immediately contrasts by having more juniper on the nose. It has the same botanicals, minus the hibiscus, and adds caraway and fennel seeds, cassia, angelica, lemon peel, liquorice, thyme and vanilla. You do get a clear family resemblance: flowers, gingernut (interesting that there are no flowers in this one, and no ginger in either) and that stemmy geranium note. On the palate this persists, though it also has more alcohol, plus the smooth, creamy character of the underlying vodka. Watered by half, I also get a dry aromatic perfume like lavender, which must come from the thyme and perhaps the seeds.

Comparing these two with SW4 gin, you realise how much more the latter is characterised by mid-range spice notes of coriander, cinnamon, cassia and maybe nutmeg, compared to the floral characters on display here. Oddly I am reminded of the G’Vine range, which is also all about flowers (vine flowers in their case), sweetness and with a strong ginger note. They too have a lower ABV version and a higher ABV one with a sterner, more junipery mix: I assume the basic idea here is to have a sweet, floral, approachable version marketed at people who basically are put off by traditional gin’s austerity, plus a more juniper-driven one for people who do actually like gin.

Both the Adnams gins are comfortable with tonic at 2:1. Again the Distilled is sweet and floral while the First Rate brings in a steely note of juniper and the sharp aromatics of the spices and resinous thyme. Adnams themselves feel both gins work well with tonic or as Martinis, and benefit from lime garnishes, adding that First Rate is also “stunning with a strip of cucumber”.

Personally I prefer the First Rate, because I like a drier, more pokey spirit, but I think both are well made, intriguingly complex products. They’re not cheap, mind—and with both First Rate and Longshore the more pernickety distillation method cranks up the price further. Adnams Copper House Barley Vodka is £22.99 for 70cl; the Longshore Vodka is £23.99 for 50cl; the North Cove Oak Aged Vodka is £25.99 for 50cl; the Distilled Gin is £23.99 for 70cl and the First Rate Gin is £24.99 for 50cl. All may be purchased directly from Adnams’ website.

* This vodka doesn't really have a name yet. On the Park Place Drinks site it is called Radost but it hasn't actually been brought to market yet. Perhaps you can email Martin your suggestions for a name?

Indiana vodka: bringing it all back home

Given that, on paper, vodka is just alcohol and water, the continuing release of new brands—each claiming to be the vodka you’ve always wanted—could reasonably strike you as little more than marketing exercises. They tend to focus on authenticity, honesty, heritage and “purity” rather than coming out and saying “Hey, this tastes really good.” Perhaps they’re just afraid that to the typical punter they all just taste like, you know, vodka.

I’ve not spent much time tasting vodkas (unlike DBS who, I discovered recently, used to be quite a connoisseur before he got into gin) so I was actually quite struck by the differences when we lined up half a dozen vodkas recently (more of which anon). One of those was Indiana vodka from Heartland Distillers in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is not yet commercially available in the UK but I was lucky enough to get a sample from Bar Spirits who will be distributing it.

Heartland is actually the first new distillery in Indiana since Prohibition, and founder Stuart Hobson believes that Prohibition pretty much killed off the state’s distilling tradition. He seems to be driven by local pride as much as anything, making a point of sourcing his raw materials locally, as well as a desire to make something artisanal and old-school. All the bottling and labelling are done by hand, he says—each bottleneck is even hand-dipped in wax.

Many vodkas boast that their spirits are “tripled distilled” or “four times distilled”, but Heartland ups the ante by distilling Indiana six times. It is distilled and redistilled in batches, and each time they discard the “head” (the first distillate to emerge, which contains impurities you don’t want) and the low-alcohol “tail” (at the end of the distillation) keeping only the “heart”, thus gradually filtering the less desirable bits of the spectrum.

Like Sipsmith, they believe copper stills are best (in fact their still was made by the same Bavarian company as Sipsmith’s, Christian Carl), and that the copper reacts with the spirit to remove certain impurities such as sulphites.

Indiana is made from corn and maize, which Hobson believes produces a smoother and lighter flavour, with a sweeter finish, than vodkas made from wheat or potato. Just think, he says, how much tastier corn on the cob is compared to bread or mashed potato. Hmm. I don’t know that this argument holds much water, but there’s no doubting that Indiana is cracking vodka. It’s a lot like Sipsmith, in fact, in that it is smooth, sweet and creamy (a characteristic that Sipsmith attribute to their vodka’s being made from barley—not corn). It’s also remarkably fruity.

I have some Sipsmith to hand, so how do they compare? The Sipsmith has a much softer nose, with less of the fruitiness of Indiana, and its palate is dominated by a smooth unctuousness. I’ve also got a mini of Chase potato vodka: this is fruitier again on the nose, almost vinous, but the palate is quite buttery, hinting at ice cream. Chase somehow tickles the sour-receptors of the tongue without actually tasting sour, whereas Sipsmith bats its eyelids at your sweetness-receptors*. Compared to both, Indiana actually seems quite dry.

The only vodka I have to hand that I think may be made from wheat** is Smirnoff Red. It’s probably an unfair comparison, but I try the Smirnoff alongside. It seems to have no nose at all—and no taste***, only a little burning at the back of the throat to let you know it was there.

Clearly vodkas are not created equal. But I’m not convinced that any particular grain is the bee’s knees. I wouldn’t say that Indiana, the only corn/maize vodka I have knowingly tried, is superior to Chase potato vodka or Sipsmith barley vodka****. But it’s certainly good.

Matt Ford from Bar Spirits tells me the retail price of Indiana will be £23–26 when it gets here around 28th March. From their vodka Heartland make a range of seven infused versions as well as a gin they call Prohibition, which I will tell you about very shortly.


* Apparently we were lied to in school and the tongue does not have specific zones for different tastes. Which must be a bit embarrassing for high-end drinks glass merchant Reidel who used the “tongue map” as justification for their vast range of specific vessels for every conceivable alcoholic drink. Well, I don’t suppose they do one for Thunderbird or WKD, but they do an awful lot and they tend to be very expensive.
** Actually it's hard to know what it is made from. I heard a rumour that it was made from molasses spirit, as a lot of European volume vodka apparently is, but the Diageo PR I spoke to insisted it is "grain"-based. This website aimed at those with food allergies offers a list that gives Smirnoff as corn-based, something I've seen elsewhere. Yet another site suggests that in its original form it was made from wheat and rye, which I think is quite traditional, but that under Diageo it can be made from all manner of grain and non-grain spirits. Neither Smirnoff's nor Diageo's sites tell you anything.
*** Amusing, in 1938 Smirnoff was (quite successfully) marketed by one distributor in Kentucky as "White whiskey—no taste, no smell".
**** Martin Price, the man behind SW4, also has a vodka up his sleeve, as it were. It has not been brought to market yet, so I don’t even know what it will be called, but it is also made from barley. It’s jolly good, but it is different from Sipsmith, with saltier, edgier style.

Oaked gin: tasting notes after two days

Mr Bridgman-Smith's oaked gin

DBS recently pressed a small phial of yellow liquid on me and demanded I tasted it at once. Fortunately it wasn’t a urine sample but some of his experimental oak-aged gin (see post below).

I think he said that the sample had been drawn after just 36 hours: I was impressed by how much colour had been taken on already, but I guess chipped wood does have a very high surface area.

The nose was clearly gin, but also had a smoky, caramel/burnt sugar element and a hint of petrol—subtle but clearly there. On the palate this is carried across: a touch of petrol oiliness which augments the dry, steely juniper rather well. Again a whiff of smoke but also a definite butteriness, reminiscent of big, butterfat/vanilla oaked New World white wines.

I confess I am aware of the shortcomings of the gin itself, which seems rather rough and fierce. I gather it’s Aldi own-label Oliver Cromwell gin. But David tells me that he too recognises this issue and is working on a second batch that uses Sipsmith gin. Bring it on, I say. Without doubt this experiment is worthwhile—my overall impression is that the warm characteristic of the oak should fruitfully augment the dry edge of gin and make rather a fascinating drink.

Sloe! sloe! Quick, quick—sloe!

DBS braces himself for the task ahead. He looks suitably daunted

Sloe gin is not something I think about most of the time. But while testing some serving suggestions with Beefeater’s Winter Edition gin I tried one cocktail that called for sloe gin as an ingredient. I happened to have a miniature of Plymouth’s version and it got me wondering how many firms made it and how they compared.

I suggested a tasting to DBS and, being a compulsive taxonomist, he jumped at the idea. Considering that one manufacturer told us that most of the people he knew who drank it actually made their own, it was surprising that we managed to unearth 17 different products to try. (There at least another three which we have not yet tried.) All the producers were happy to supply samples (well, all except Gordon’s, but since theirs is the mostly widely distributed perhaps they felt they didn’t need the publicity)—in fact I think many were delighted that anyone even knew about their product.

Traditionally you harvest sloes, fruit of the blackthorn and related to the plum, and infuse them in gin with sugar, sometimes adding cloves, cinnamon and/or almond (though apparently a well-made sloe gin extracts an almond-like flavour from the sloe stones). Pick your berries in October or early November when they are most ripe, and prick or cut them. Folklore has it that this should be done using thorns from the bush itself—and if you must use a metal knife or fork, be sure it be silver. Arrrr. I have heard that the sugar is not just for taste, but is necessary early in the procedure to extract the full flavour from the berries. Add the sloes in a half-and-half mixture with gin, along with the sugar, and shake daily for the first week, then weekly for a month or two. Sounds like the idea is to have it ready just in time for Christmas, though I’m told the flavour will be better if left till the next Christmas. Even after the liquor is strained off, the leftover berries can by used to make “slider”, cider infused with post-gin sloes, or indeed to make sloe jam.

(Left to right) Will Sprunt, me, Fleur de Guerre, Compton-Bassett, David
Bridgman-Smith, Robert Beckwith, Sara Bridgman-Smith

What you end up with conventionally is something that balances red berry fruit, tartness, sweetness, dry tannins from the skins and warmth from the spirit. But if making your own is such a traditional ritual (even Prince Phillip does it), how would these commercial products measure up?

We assembled a team of seven: David and Sara Bridgman-Smith, Fleur de Geurre, Compton-Bassett, Robert Beckwith, Will Sprunt and myself. In order to sample this many different products between seven of us would mean 119 glasses which our venue, Graphic, weren’t able to free up, so we sourced some plastic shot glasses. (I’ve no idea what the “correct” vessel for tasting sloe gin is, but at least this way it was a level playing field.) Perhaps we should have had some homemade sloe gin to compare against, but we would have needed to think about that months earlier—and it wouldn’t really have been much use to you, the reader, as you could not have gone out and bought that anyway.

Of course it’s hard to keep a memory of 17 flavours in your head, and David had an idea to split the samples into four tranches, giving a favourite out of each, then seeking our favourites of the favourites (slightly flawed—what if the best and second best of all turn out to be in the same tranche?). We also paused halfway through, to wrap our tongues in hot towels and massage them back into shape.

Made it to the end! And my notes are still relatively legible

But it quickly emerged to me that there was another way of subdividing the samples. Some seemed clearly “classic” in style—specifically Plymouth, Hayman’s, Gordon’s and Marks and Spencer—with a deep red colour and aiming for a traditional balance of the flavours described above. Then there was a second group which I described as “ginny”—Hawker’s, Sipsmith, Foxdenton and Sloe Motion. These were the ones that clearly wanted you to remember that this was originally gin. (I gather some commercial products just use neutral grain spirit and bypass the actual gin stage; which seems valid enough to me. I suspect that the traditional reason for starting with gin is that that is what was to hand. It might be interesting to home-make batches side by side using gin and vodka.) These high-gin examples unsurprisingly were also the ones highest in alcohol. (Overall the sloe gins ranged from 17.6% to 30% ABV, but most were around 26%, evidently the point which most manufacturers felt offered the right balance.)

The remaining samples, which I dubbed “artisanal”, went in various directions. Some were light and fruity, others sweet, others heavily spiced. I’ll save my individual tasting notes till the end and cut to the chase—which drink was best? Attempting to rank all 17 in order of preference was too big a task for a mortal palate, but we felt that tasters would probably gravitate towards certain favourites, so we asked everyone to name their top three, in order. Awarding three points for a first place position, two points for a second and one for a third, we were able to come up with a reasonably scientific scoring system. It’s also worth noting that between seven people picking three sloe gins each, only ten products actually featured at all. Out of the total of 42 points awarded, here is how they were allotted:

GOLD MEDAL
Plymouth
(7 points)

SILVER MEDAL
Hawker’s, Sipsmith and Bramley & Gage Organic
(all with 6 points)

BRONZE MEDAL
Foxdenton
(5 points)

6th: Juniper Green (4 points)
7th: Jack Cain (2½ points)
= 8th: Sloe Motion (2 points)
= 8th: Bramley & Gage Original (2 points)
10th: Gabriel Boudier (1½ points)

See below for the also-rans that received nul points.

If you’ve not tried sloe gin there are, as you can see, plenty to choose from (though I note that the most widely available, Gordon’s, didn’t even make it into the top ten). I admit it’s not easy to get anything other than Gordon’s, though Majestic do stock Sipsmith’s. Follow the links to individual sites to find out how to purchase.


Full list with my tasting notes (in the random order in which we sampled them):
1. Moniack Sloe Liqueur (17.6%, £12.99) A light, orangey colour, more like a rosé wine. Cider nose. Sweet, light palate with a thin, simple taste.
2. Bramley and Gage Sweet Sloe Gin (26%, £11.49 for 35cl) B&G actually make three different sloe products. This is darker in colour than the Moniack and with a richer nose, of red berries. Also sweet, though better balanced. Almonds on the nose and palate. Herbal finish that, as Will points out, is reminiscent of certain Eastern European liqueurs and bitters.
3. Plymouth Sloe Gin (26%, c. £17.95) Darker but with a quieter nose and a drier, tarter palate. Balanced and straightforward. The website makes a song and dance about how traditional it is and the pure Dartmoor water that goes into it, but in fact the sloes come from Poland.
4. Sipsmith 2009 Vintage Sloe Gin (29%, £20 for 50cl) Sipsmith make their vodka, gin and sloe gin (in that order—the one from another) in a garage in west London, in the first new copper still to be built in London for about 200 years. They make a point of the fact that this batch was bottled last year. I categorise this as a gin-led product (hence the high ABV). Indeed it has a strong juniper “blue note” and makes the Plymouth seem quite almondy by comparison. I got a hint of pipe tobacco.
5. Bramley & Gage Sloe Gin (26%, £11.95 for 35cl) Unsurprisingly like no. 2 but not as sweet. Almonds less pronounced. Clear herbal nose with cinnamon on the palate. Expected to like it more.
6. Lyme Bay Sloe Liqueur (26%, from £13.23 for 35cl) Smells of juniper but is actually quite sweet and orangey on the palate. Also has some dark brown note, like coffee, perhaps.
7. Gordon’s Sloe Gin (26%, from £15.99) Citrus nose, balanced palate—almonds, alcohol, berries. Will mentioned that it tastes of used tea bags—in a good way—and once the idea is there you can definitely taste an Earl Grey element.
8. Hawker’s (28%, about £17.50) Apparently this was the first sloe gin to be made commercially, to a recipe dating back to 1790. Although it is made by Desmond Payne, Master Distiller for Beefeater, it actually uses Plymouth gin as its base, but its sloes (unlike with Plymouth’s own sloe gin) are wild-picked on Dartmoor. I think this is a cracking example and once I had tasted it it remained my favourite. It is a ginny sloe gin (hell, I guess I just like the taste of gin) but I these elements balance well with the sloes and the whole is better integrated than the other gin-led examples.
9. Juniper Green Organic Sloe Gin (26%, £22.25) Uses wild sloes from Romania. Citrus nose, with a hint of fermenting pears, and elements of cinnamon and coffee on the palate. Popular round the table.
10. Hayman’s Sloe Gin (26%, £17.29) An example of the classic style. Smells of mulled wine and oranges, with a hint of maltwine (i.e. unaged whisky, and a distinctive element in genever). Well balanced, but not hugely interesting. By comparison the M&S version seems more weighted towards citrus and the Plymouth seems chocolatey.
11. Bramley & Gage Organic Sloe Gin (26%, £13.27 for 35cl, £22.47 for 70cl) Uses a different (organic) gin base from the normal B&G version. Smells faintly of ink or boot polish, but not necessarily in a bad way. Almondy, but less so that the non-organic version.
12. Sloe Motion Sloe Gin (26%, £15.95 for 35cl, 22.95 for 70cl) These people are sloe-crazy, making sloe brandy, sloe whisky, sloe vodka, sloe chutney, sloe truffles. They probably live in a house  built from compacted sloes. Perhaps surprisingly, the sloe gin falls into the gin-led category. Hints of lavender.
13. Gabriel Boudier (25%, £17.55) Made in Dijon, in France. Very soft and quite sweet. Perhaps suffered from coming late in the list, as there is more going on than you at first think. Will sums it up as “kind of pleasant”, which sounds like damning with faint praise.
14. Marks and Spencer Sloe Gin (26%, £10.95 for 50cl) A classic style, with an almond element but balanced, with no angles or corners. Nice enough.
15. Foxdenton Sloe Gin (29%, £18.95) “Recognisably Different Sloe Gin”, they say. They’re right in the sense that, even among the other ginny sloe gins, this one tastes as if they really didn’t want to contaminate their lovely gin with any more sloes than absolutely necessary. Rather unintegrated. Doesn’t work for me though others like it; it’s DBS’s favourite.
16. Cowen Sloe Gin (26%, £15.29 for 50cl) Smooth, subtle, herbal, with coffee notes. OK.
17. Jack Cain’s Sloe Gin (30%, £24 for 70cl, £4.95 for 5cl) The driest and strongest sample here. Cain was a 19th-Century entrepreneur, smuggler and illicit distiller in Northumbria and this is made to an “old family recipe”. Quite a hardcore drink, more like a sloe bitters, seemingly with no added sugar. But intriguingly complex, with elements of vanilla, chocolate, coriander. Probably quite a useful cocktail ingredient; I'm definitely going to try a Sloetini. You can buy miniatures online but if you want a full bottle you’ll have to get it in person from the makers or from Fenwick’s in Newcastle.

The trouble with vermouth

Sipsmith co-founder Sam Galsworthy shows off
Prudence, their magnificent still

On Monday night I attended a "Martini Masterclass" with Jared Brown at the Sipsmith distillery in west London. It's a glorious place, basically a garage in a well-heeled suburban street which happens to have a gleaming copper still at one end—the first new one in London for 200 years. It took them some two years to get their distiller's licence, which they have framed. I asked why it was so difficult to get licenced—were there tough requirements, does the government investigate every aspect of your history and character? No, apparently it's just because it had been so long since they issued a new licence that nobody in power knew how to do it. (The Sipsmith chaps sought help in Scotland, where they are much more on the ball about such things.)

Anyway, unlike many Martini aficionados who devote time and ingenuity to crafting techniques and even specialised equipment for delivering the most homoeopathically small doses of vermouth into their gin, Jared prefers the more classic proportions of 2:1 or even 1:1. (We began with an early recipe that was a 1:1 mix of gin and sweet red vermouth, in this case Carpano Antica Formula, allegedly a recreation of the original vermouth from 1786; the result was delicious, pleasantly vanilla inflected, and not as sweet as I feared—I think the same thing made with Martini Rosso would make my teeth curl.)

Jared Brown, our guide in the masterclass

But all of this raises a question that has vexed me for years—how do you stop your vermouth from going off?

Vermouth is a wine and, at about 14% or 15% ABV, not really any stronger than conventional wine and certainly not strong enough to preserve itself. With any other wine if you opened it, poured out a small measure then put the bottle back on a shelf for weeks or months, you would expect it to be oxidised beyond palatability next time you opened it. Yet people tend to assume that vermouth, because it is a cocktail ingredient, will last indefinitely. Jared tells all kinds of horror stories of being served Martinis in bars where the ancient vermouth has ruined the drink—his strategy, apparently, is gamely to drink the drink, then to ask the barman if he can open a fresh bottle for vermouth for the next one. If the barman is offended, Jared challenges him to compare the two.

At home the problem is more pronounced, as you probably aren't processing the volume of Martinis that a busy cocktail bar does. To my tastebuds every drink after the first one with a new bottle has that sour whiff of oxidation; if you're lucky it seems to dissipate a little after the drink is initially mixed (or maybe that's just the booze kicking in and numbing my senses), but it still spoils the first savouring of one's cocktail. I made a Manhattan the other day from a bottle of red vermouth that had been opened once and immediately resealed and stored in the fridge, and even then the oxidation was clearly there. All the connoisseurship surrounding precisely which spirits to use, in what proportions and whether to shake or stir seem irrelevant to me if there is that rank overtone of oxidation squatting in my glass.

One technique I tried was storing vermouth in small doses

I did some experimentation into this a year or two ago. One technique was to open a new bottle and immediately decant it into test tubes (each representing about the right amount for one drink) which I sealed, initially with corks, until I discovered that the cheap test tubes I had bought had a tendency to crack, so I used cling film instead. It didn't really work: perhaps I needed to fill the tube to the very brim, or perhaps I should have chilled them as well (thought there isn't really space in my fridge for a test tube rack).

I also tried pouring the newly opened vermouth into ice cube trays and freezing it. Because of the alcohol content it forms quite soft ice but interestingly you can use one of these both to add the vermouth element and to chill the drink without dilution (although Jared feels that some dilution is actually important to releasing the flavours of the ingredients). Again, it didn't work as well as I'd hoped, as the frozen vermouth still seems to oxidise eventually—and in an open tray it also tends to take on the flavours of other things in the freezer, such as coffee beans… I may try zipping the ice cube tray up in one of those self-sealing plastic freezer bags.

Frozen cubes of dry vermouth. Yes, I know they look like raw scallops.

One technique I have heard about, but not yet tried, is to use a layer of inert gas to shield your vermouth from the air. I have been advised that Halford sells canisters of argon and argon/nitrogen mix for welding purposes, but I suspect this is a bit hardcore and God knows what equipment you need to release it. There is in fact a product called Private Preserve aimed at wine preservation, which is an aerosol that sprays an argon/nitrogen/CO2 mix into your opened bottle. I have heard good things about it, so I may well investigate.

Private Preserve in operation

Mr Bridgman-Smith is less exercised about all this. He simply shrugs and says, "Use miniatures." Have you ever tried to find miniatures of Noilly Prat? They do exist, but I am not aware of a reliable source. Martini Extra Dry miniatures can be found, if that is the vermouth you wish to use, but it all adds up to a lot more money for the volume than you pay for a 750cl bottle. I'd be sorely tempted to get myself a bottle of Carpano Antica Formula (see above) if it weren't for the fact that it comes in one-litre bottles at £26 a pop—it would take me a fair while to get through a litre, and after the first few uses it will have started rotting already.

No, I'm convinced there must be a way to preserve the stuff.

If anyone wants me I'll be in the Martini Lab.