Category Archives: gin

New Holland Spirits

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new holland spirits

New Holland Spirits was relatively unknown to me until I ran into them at Tales of the Cocktail this year and tasted their fantastic orange liqueur (more on that in a minute).

Born out of New Holland Brewery in Michigan, the spirits line is pretty diverse and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve tried so far, including their Beer Barrel Bourbon. They were generous enough to let us try many of their other spirits. Here’s what we think:

Walleye Rye, $40-50. A rye with more fruitiness than I expected. Spicy, yes, but there’s a lot more dried fruit and sweetness than I’m used to in a rye. I feel like this rye’s fruity flavor is possibly due more to its younger age than what it’s distilled from. It;s fun to use this to make more fruit-forward rye cocktails, like Manhattans.

Knickerbocker Barrel Gin, $35. I love barrel aged gins. They helped me transition from being mostly a gin drinker to whiskey. When you take a sip, this is in the very end of the taste you get a caramel-barrel sweetness that’s really great. We tasted this on an episode of the podcast as well.

Clockwork Orange Liqueur, $30. This is the drink that drew me to New Holland initially. A high-proof (40%) triple sec that can easily be a stand-alone sipper. I know folks who like to drink straight triple secs or curacous while smoking cigars, and this is leaps and bounds better than the $10 bottom-shelf triple secs you see at the grocery store. It’s not too sweet, it’s slightly bitter and spicy. I’ll be saving this bottle for high-end cocktails and for sipping.

As their distillery line is relatively new, there isn’t national distribution of New Holland’s spirits. Mostly available near and in the areas surrounding Holland, Michigan, USA, if you get a chance to try their line, you won’t be disappointed.

 

St. Augustine Distillery New World Gin

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st augustine gin

Hailing from the U.S.’s “oldest city,” St. Augustine Distillery distills New World Gin from sugar cane.

St. Augustine Distillery is based out of St. Augustine, Florida, a city founded in 1565 by the Spanish. The distillery was established in an old ice plant and distills all their products from Florida Cane Sugar. To my knowledge, Florida cane has never made its way into gin. I’ve always associated cane sugar with rum of course, or maybe sodas like Mountain Dew and Pepsi in their “Throwback” line, but gin?

New World Gin has a solid juniper base and a fragrant nose. I was surprised by the powerful but welcome bite that came with the first sip. If bite is your game, then this is the gin for you. The juniper is followed by a blend of orange, lemon, and cassia bark, angelica, and a number of other botanicals. then there’s the Florida cane sugar that adds a sweet and unique quality to New World. There’s a pleasantly sweet, spicy finish and lingering bite in the finish.

New World Gin can be purchased directly at St. Augustine Distillery Co. or on their website for about $30. They also distill Florida Cane Vodka and their Discovery Rum there, and are working to get their product distributed nationally as well.

Uptown Cooler

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uptown cooler cocktail

I designed this custom cocktail for 7 Delicious Creative Albuquerque Cocktails. There’s nothing about it that says you can’t be sippin’ on one outside of the Land of Enchantment, plus it’s refreshing as heck, so let’s get drinking!

Uptown Cooler

  • in a tall glass, add:
  • 1 1/2 oz of gin
  • 1/2 oz of fresh-squeezed lime juice
  • 2 cucumber slices
  • muddle them together in the bottom of the glass
  • fill the glass with ice and top with club soda
  • serve with a straw and garnish with a thin cucumber slice

 

Uncle Val’s Peppered Gin

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uncle vals peppered gin

As a refresher for those who’re new to this blog, gin was really the liquor that eased me in to quality, classic cocktails. My first year of blogging took me from a time when I’d tasted 1-2 gins to tasting dozens.

I’ve also realized that like any liquor, there is a massive variety of flavor possibilities and I prefer some gins over others. At this point, though, I’m realizing that flavored gin is not so common. Seagram’s has a variety of gin flavors, sure, but up until now, the only flavored gin I’ve tried is Tanqueray Rangpur.

Lisa and I tasted Uncle Val’s Peppered Gin for the first time on this week’s podcast episode. One thing’s for sure: this is a unique gin. The specific ingredients in Uncle Val’s Peppered are red pepper, black pepper, and pimento. The pepper is not present at all in the nose at all, but your throat gets fills with a peppery hotness when you swallow. So much, in fact, that it’s a little alarming.

We wondered if maybe a Red Snapper (a gin Bloody Mary) or a Gin and Tonic would be good fit for this gin, and it turns out that it is. I made a G&T (shown above) and it was quite good: sweet, peppery, and herbal in it’s flavor – a good fit. I imagine a Red Snapper will be equally great.

I REALLY like black pepper, as you may have seen in some of my breakfast instagrams, and I really like gin too, but this is a new flavor profile for me. It smells like a soft citrusy gin and tastes like a lot of pepper. Because of that, your Snappers and G&Ts will welcome the change of pace, but your Martinis may be a little too rough-tasting with this specific gin.

 

Our Stanley Cocktail

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our stanley cocktail

My first homemade cocktail was a Borodino, which is a 1:1:1 variation of the drink pictured here. If you’ve ever visited our Buyers Guide section, you’ve seen that the first 4 bottles of liquor I recommend that you buy are vodka, gin, triple sec, and dry vermouth. This cocktail uses 3 of those 4.

The cool thing about this particular cocktail is that subtle adjustments to the brands you use, particularly in the gin and triple sec, will make a big difference in the flavor of this drink. For instance, a barrel-aged gin, or Cointreau instead of a simple triple sec will give you all sorts of flavors to play with.  Also there’s no garnish, so if you’re still growing your home bar this should be a cinch to make.

In this case of my cocktail, I decided to use Brothers Old Tom Gin, a local Albuquerque gin from Left Turn Distilling, a gin that’s a touch sweet with heavy citrus. Here’s how to make Our Stanley:

Our Stanley

 

Jewel Cocktail

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jewel cocktail

Recently, I’ve been finding a lot of good cocktail recipes in Old Mr. Boston’s Bartenders Guide. I’m usually able to find simple recipes with pretty classic ingredients in it. By classic I’m really referring to the presence of bitters, which are an essential element of a home bar and one of the key components of a cocktail.

If you’ve picked up many cocktail books, I may have noticed what I have. There are two types: the classic cocktail books (even if they’ve been published recently) in which many recipes have bitters, or the more modern (for lack of a better word) books, like one from my collection: The Complete Bartender. There are zero recipes with bitters in that book – it’s lots of vodka-and-juice cocktails, aka 1990’s cocktails (which is not a good thing, believe me).

Back to Mr. Boston, though. I found a fun recipe with gin, Chartreuse and sweet vermouth that has a really great flavor profile and looks really cool if you perch the cherry garnish right on the edge like I did:

Jewel Cocktail

  • in a mixing glass, combine:
  • 3/4 oz green Chartreuse
  • 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
  • 3/4 oz gin
  • 1 dash of orange bitters
  • stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass
  • garnish with a cherry

We’ve made the Jewel on the Simple Cocktails Podcast, too. Listen here.

 

Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye

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double standard sour catocin creek

Catoctin Creek is a relatively new distillery in the United States, founded in 2009 in Virginia and distilling mostly rye whiskey, gin, and brandy. Their portfolio perked up my attention and I got a bottle of their 92-proof Roundstone Rye, the middle product in their rye lineup, and one that will run you just over $50 a bottle.

For a 6-year old distillery, their whiskeys are going to be aged for that amount of time or less. Roundstone spells it out on the bottle: “Aged 5 years or less.” For a whiskey that’s traditionally pretty spicy and dry, a younger rye takes on a surprising candy sweetness in the taste that sets it apart from many other ryes I’ve tasted. In fact, the only other whiskey I can compare Roundstone Rye to is also young, spicy, sweet and brash: Jack Daniel’s Unaged Rye.

In honor of Catoctin’s rye and gin lineup, I chose a cocktail from Old Mr. Boston’s Bartenders Guide – a handy midsized cocktail book with some great recipes. Pairing gin and whiskey into one drink, here’s the Double Standard Sour:

Double Standard Sour

  • in a cocktail shaker, combine:
  • 3/4 oz lemon juice
  • 3/4 oz whiskey
  • 3/4 oz gin
  • 1/2 teaspoon grenadine
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • shake well with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass
  • garnish with a lemon wedge and cherry

 

Casino Cocktail

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casino cocktail

Sometimes for Christmas, I whip up a cocktail that’s uniquely designed for that holiday – like when I put a red bow on one, or when I smashed up candy canes to rim a drink [video link].

Other times, though, the simplicity of a classic cocktail stands as a perfectly suitable Christmas gift, so that’s what I’ve settled on this Christmas: a ghostly white drink with an electric red cherry to garnish. Merry Christmas!

Casino Cocktail

  • in a shaker, combine:
  • 2 oz gin
  • 3/4 oz lemon juice 
  • 1/2 oz maraschino liqueur
  • dash of orange bitters
  • shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass
  • garnish with a cherry

We made the Casino on the Simple Cocktails Podcast, too. Listen here.

G’Vine Nouaison

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gvine nouaison

This summer, I tried G’Vine gin for the first time. What I didn’t really realize at the time was there are two varieties of G’Vine: Flouraison and Nouaison. Flouraison, as I described in my previous post, is a mild, soft gin with quite a bit of sweetness and traces of minty licorice.

Nouaison, I’ve discovered, is more akin to a London Dry as it’s a spicier bitier gin with cinnamon and clove. Nouaison is more in line with my personal preference in gins, as I tend to prefer London Drys to many of the milder gins.

In cocktails, Nouaison has a very different character than it’s more herbal brother, and I can see why G’Vine told me that they consider Flouraison a warm-weather gin and Nouaison a cold-weather gin. This would be a great gin in a hot toddy or a tea as the spice profile is a perfect fit.

Somewhere on the list of my favorite gins, Nouaison has elbowed it’s way in. This is a unique winter gin, and reminds me of Big Gin a little bit because of it’s flavor profile. Nouaison is definitely one to try if you like your gins spicy with a bite.

Last Word Cocktail

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last word cocktailThe Last Word has become a bit of a legendary cocktail for the craft cocktail movement. Simple enough to make and simple 1:1:1:1 recipe proportions, half of its ingredients are unusual to the point that only a craft cocktail bar would be likely to have both of them (Maraschino and Chartreuse).

This cocktail has some great balance, with herbal flavors mixing with sweetness and citrus in a way that you rarely taste. Try one out yourself (if you have the 4 ingredients)!

Last Word

  • in a shaker, combine:
  • 1/2 oz gin
  • 1/2 oz green Chartreuse
  • 1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
  • 1/2 oz lime juice
  • shake with ice and strain into a small, chilled cocktail glass.