Are modern barrel-aged gins, which are aged intentionally and look like brown spirits, considered gimmicky then? Sean Ou, head of education of The Beverage Clique, a wine and spirits training centre and consultancy, thinks they aren’t. Instead, he considers a barrel-aged gin a sub-category because of its link to a past tradition.
“There’s always a place for a sub-category [of spirits] if it provides a diversity of flavours somewhat different from the original, one that is pleasant and positive,” he said. But he noted that cask-aged gins straddle a fine line before they tread into brown spirit territory and start tasting like a whisky, something he has “unfortunately experienced in the past”.
“To make a good, balanced version [of a cask-aged gin] that can be appreciated is a tough task; if it retains its original gin flavours with a touch of oak, it could be seen as a good thing,” he said.
Bruichladdich’s Hannett noted that for a spirit to be classed as a gin, “the liquid must be juniper-forward”. He said: “With our Cask Aged and Cask Rested gins, we wanted to retain the [original] fresh, herbaceous note that runs through the heart of The Botanist. Taking that liquid and ageing it allows us the opportunity to experiment and push the boundaries of people’s expectations of gin.
“With a lot of gins, flavour is added during distillation. But here, we have taken a purist approach of allowing time and cask to do their work, and we are proud of the results.”
Ou said that cask-aged gins can play an interesting role in the bar scene, whether it’s “providing a more dynamic flavour profile for cocktails or just for sipping pleasure”. He would use such a gin to replace the brown spirit in a simple cocktail, such as the Highball. “The classic flavours of juniper and citrus in a cask-aged gin may already be rather delicate due to the oak treatment, [so] having a mixer such as soda would not musk those flavours — it might also give [the cocktail] a bit of an aromatic lift,” he said.
Here are four barrel-aged gins you should try.
THE BOTANIST CASK AGED GIN