Hansard, the ghost of a gin

I was on holiday in Venice last month, staying in a self-catering apartment. On the first night we sloped into a supermarket for supplies and I was intrigued to see that the only gin they sold apart from Gordon’s was this, something called Hansard.

Such is the perceived “Britishness” of gin in many parts of the world (probably more those that don’t have so much of an indigenous gin habit) that the name didn’t really surprise me. (For those who don’t know, Hansard is the journal of record in the UK parliament.) Let’s not forget the name and label of Castle Bridge gin from Ghana. It is clearly labelled as “London Dry Gin”, but the front label also adds: “Produced according with traditional recipe [sic], from neutral spirit with the addition of juniper distillate.”

This is at once disarmingly frank and intriguing. So it has just the one botanical? It would be perfectly legitimate to make a multi-shot distillation with just juniper, then add more neutral spirit to dilute the botanical intensity, plus water to get the ABV down, and still justifiably call it a London Dry Gin. And, let’s face it, this stuff is €4.99 for a 70cl bottle, so they are clearly sparing a lot of expense in the manufacture.

The Italians may not be great gin drinkers but this is, after all, the nation that created the Negroni, and local bars are full of the usual international brands, such as Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray, as well as more exotic marques that I recognise from home. So who is Hansard aimed at? It is made on an industrial estate in Finale Emilia, Modena, by Casoni Fabbricazione Liquori S.P.A., a family firm dating back to 1814, who produce a range of spirits, liqueurs and amari. Why is the front label in English?* It could be aimed at tourists, but I suspect it is simply to give it an impression of being an import from Britain (in a market where most products actually are).

I can’t find out anything online about the brand, and the ingredients are simply given as “water, alcohol and gin distillate”. I can certainly believe that it has just one botanical, as juniper notes rise up, along with a distinct note of caraway and anise sweetness (which I could believe is an element of the juniper character), and maybe a hint of sweet orange? It is smooth enough on the tongue but dry, with an element of sugar flavour, but not sweetness. Overall it does not seem terribly strongly flavoured at all.**

It makes an unexciting G&T, adding dryness and bitterness to the tonic but not much else apart from subdued caraway. In a Martini with Noilly Prat you mostly get the vermouth; as with the tonic, if you add more gin to get a balance, it just drags down the taste of the other ingredient.

Perhaps appropriately, the best use I’ve found is in a Negroni—up against the powerful flavours of the Campari and red vermouth it serves the useful role of adding strength (though note that it is only 38% ABV), damping the sweetness and injecting a bit of juniper/caraway steel. But of course there are plenty of gins that do a better job, and if you keep adding more gin to see what happens eventually it starts to fall flat again. I also start to notice that dry sugar taste coming through, perhaps from the base spirit.

I’m not much impressed by Hansard. Although it is not rough as such, I find it rather unbalanced and, despite possibly having just one botanical, not much like gin.


*And why does no one doing this ever get an English speaker to proofread the label?

** When I initially opened the bottle I got juniper and anise/caraway. I then poured a hefty slug into a glass and covered it with clingfilm before giving the bottle to DBS. These notes are mostly made later from the sample in the glass, so it is possible that the flavour has lessened. I certainly get more caraway now than juniper but it is not strongly flavoured of anything.

Campari—an apology

The Negroni cocktail

You may have noticed that Mr Bridgman-Smith does not like Campari. He seldom misses an opportunity (nor invents one completely unwarranted) to remind us of this fact.

So I thought I'd take the opportunity to point out to you, if you didn't already know, what a great liquid Campari is.

I developed a taste for it while honey-mooning in Venice. A huge Campari sign loomed over the Lido (now gone, I hear) and the locals’ aperitif of choice was the “spritz”, a mixture of Campari*, white wine (sometimes sparkling) and fizzy water.The Austrians who ruled the place in the early 19th century started all this, to thin the strong local wine.

Campari, a bright red, bitter drink that's bottled at 25% ABV, was invented in Turin by Gaspare Campari in the early 1800s and his son was responsible for the advertising images (see example below) that helped promote it. The recipe is allegedly a closely guarded secret but is said to involve some 60 ingredients. In flavour it comes across as herbal and citric. Its colour traditionally comes from cochineal, a cactus-boring insect from South America, though I gather that in 2007 they replaced this with an artificial colouring.

The Negroni owes its existence to another cocktail, the Americano. By 1862 Gaspare had his own bar, Caffè Campari, in Milan, where he devised a blend of Campari, sweet red vermouth and soda water, calling it a Milano-Torino, after its origins. It later became known as an Americano because of its popularity with tourists. Legend has it that, in 1919, one Count Camillo Negroni went into the Caffè Casoni in Florence and asked the barman, Fosco Scarselli, to beef up his Americano with gin. (Whether at this stage the gin actually replaced the soda, I’m not clear.) This became Negroni’s favourite drink and it took his name.

1 part gin
1 part Campari
1 part red vermouth (Martini Rosso, Cinzano Rosso, Noilly Prat red or something rare groove like Antica Formula)

Stir the ingredients together over ice.This is conventionally served with a wedge of orange, sometimes joined by a wedge of lemon, or alternatively with a strip of orange or lemon zest. One elaborate variant has you squeeze orange zest over a lit match above the glass: the rind oils flare up and fill the place with a burnt orange aroma.

I’ve found variants where the vermouth is reduced to a ¾ part or the gin to a ⅓ part. Some people add Fée Orange Bitters. It is also sometimes served strained into a Martini glass rather than on the rocks, or you can tone it down with soda water. A popular drink in Italy is the Negroni Sbagliato (a “wrong Negroni”) where sparkling white wine is used instead of the gin (which sounds a lot like the Venetian spritz) or the Negroski, where the gin is replaced by vodka. A Cardinal is a Negroni with the red vermouth replaced by dry white vermouth—a pretty dry drink.

Replacing the gin with bourbon makes a Boulvardier. Using rye whisky gives you an Old Pal, a recipe that appeared in Harry MacElhone's famous ABC of Cocktails in 1922—just three years after the origin story of the Negroni.

Finally, one pleasant way I’ve discovered to enjoy Campari is to add a splash to one’s gin and tonic.

*Actually a Spritz can be made with Aperol, Select Pilla or Cynar, an artichoke-flavoured substance, but I gather that the Campari version is considered the “man’s spritz”. I tried Aperol once and thought it pretty foul, but I haven’t sampled the others.