The Best Gin, Revisted
What to do in a lower-proof Beefeater world.
Shortly after this newsletter began, I wrote a column recommending a single brand of gin for all your cocktail needs. At the time, this was relatively easy—there was an obvious choice, widely available, reasonably priced, and favored by many top notch bars and bartenders: Beefeater.
Beefeater was the classic London dry gin: spiky, biting, juniper forward, and, at 47 percent ABV, strong enough to carry most any cocktail easily. It wasn’t always the very best dry gin for any single cocktail, but it was often competitive with the best, and it was more versatile than basically any other similarly priced, similarly available brand. Beefeater was a workhorse. It was reliable. It could handle pretty much any gin-related task you threw at it. If you kept just one bottle of gin on your bar cart, Beefeater was the obvious pick.
It’s not so obvious now. In recent years, Beefeater has reduced the proof of its American product, first to 44 percent, and then, sometime in 2023, to 40 percent.
For quite a while, it was still possible to find bottles of 44 percent on liquor store shelves. But over the last few months, those higher proof bottles have largely disappeared.
The move to 44 percent was a disappointment to many, but I didn’t find it too ruinous. The more recent move to 40 percent, on the other hand, was a considerable step down. It wasn’t that Beefeater became a bad gin, exactly. But it lost enough of its sturdiness and strength that it was no longer reliable. I still have one 44 percent bottle on my bar shelf. But I think it’s time to move on.
The good news is that this is a good time to explore the wider world of gin. Indeed, several readers have requested such an exploration—which leads me to suspect that I’m not the only one who is looking for gin in a post-Beefeater world.
Fortunately, the world of gin is vast and varied. Even if you’re sticking just to London Dry styles, you have a lot of options. And the gin you select for any given cocktail will make a real difference in how the drink tastes, and how well the combination of ingredients integrates. London Dry gins share some characteristics, but they aren’t just indistinguishable clones. A Martini—or a Negroni or a Clover Club or a Gimlet—made with Gordon’s will taste considerably different than one made with Tanqueray or Broker’s. And if you stretch out beyond London Dry styles to gins like Plymouth or Hendrick’s, the difference becomes even more noticeable.
So this week, we are going to look at a selection of cocktail-worthy gins that should be on your radar. I’ll make a recommendation for a gin that does the best job of stepping into Beefeater’s shoes, albeit with a different balance of strengths.
And then, at the end, we’ll make a lovely, clever, deceptively simple three-ingredient (plus bitters) Martini-ish cocktail that builds off of last week’s drink and also employs one of our favorites, Cocchi Americano. If you just want a cocktail, skip to the end!
Of All the Gins in All the Cocktails…
It’s beyond the scope of a single newsletter to review every gin on the market. I won’t even be able to note every gin on my shelf—I currently have 20-odd bottles, some of which get a lot more use than others. This is Cocktails With Suderman, not Various Gins With Suderman. It’s a weekly newsletter, not a complete encyclopedia of gin.
Instead, I want to start by laying out an ideal of a good cocktail gin.
I often talk about spirits as actors that can play certain type of roles. A good cocktail whiskey is an all-around leading man, capable of fronting any project and making it work. An amaro is more like a character actor, whose quirks and tics add interest to the production. A single-flavor sweet liqueur—like the Giffard chile liqueur we used last week—is a scene-stealer designed to add a very specific trait without overtaking everything else.
A good gin, in contrast, is more like an effective TV host. In some ways, it’s the star of the show, with a distinctive and recognizable personality around which the program is built. But the job isn’t just to chew scenery or always be the center of attention. Instead, it’s to create an environment that allows various guests to shine, and to do so in a way that seems effortless.
What I’m looking for in gin, then, is basically Conan O’Brien at this year’s Oscars—clever, charming, with a distinctive personality and even a quirk or two, but who is comfortable letting the spotlight shine on others, even as he anchors the show. Broad appeal and a willingness to share the stage are key.
More specifically, you want a gin that works in a Martini, a Negroni, and some sort of sour format—that is also reasonably affordable and widely available.