German gin from bone-dry to sweet gin liqueur
At nur Gutes, gin comes from the Vulkaneifel region, the Saar, Karlsruhe, and the Alte Land, as well as from Trentino and Norrbotten. Juniper is accompanied by grapefruit, raspberry, pine bud, mint, coffee, or ginseng root.
Gin is a spirit with at least 37.5% vol made from neutral alcohol of agricultural origin, which is flavored or distilled with juniper berries and other botanicals. The taste must be dominated by juniper, and whatever else plays a role reflects the signature of the respective producer.
Gin means juniper; the style gives it its specific name
The name already contains the plant, as the Latin juniperus for juniper became the French genièvre. In Holland, this turned into Genever, which has been documented there since the seventeenth century. Under William III of Orange, it came to England, and there, Genever was turned into Gin.
What is called a juniper berry is botanically a seed cone that remains green in its first year. It only ripens in the second or third year, becoming blue-black and often covered in a bluish bloom. If you crush such a berry between your fingers, you already have the scent of gin in your nose.
How this fragrance ends up in the bottle determines the specific name. For a gin, it is enough to infuse neutral alcohol with juniper and other aromas. In distilled gin, the alcohol goes through the still once more with the berries and other plants. This is how the Heide Gin from Sasse is made, where the botanicals—as the plant ingredients of gin are called—steep in the neutral alcohol before being distilled in a copper pot still.
The strictest rules apply to London Gin, whose entire aroma must come from this second distillation with all its botanicals. Its distillate is at least 70% vol, and afterwards, it receives neither aroma nor color. The deep-blue Illusionist, whose color comes from the butterfly pea flower, therefore remains a Dry Gin. "London" is a production style and not a place of origin, which is why the London Gin from Karlsruhe rightfully bears its name.
A gin may only carry the label "Dry" if one liter contains no more than 0.1 grams of sweetening ingredients, whereas one without the label may be sweetened. For London Gin, this limit always applies, and thus it may also call itself London Dry Gin, as Windspiel now labels its Premium Dry Gin.
The neutral alcohol upon which every gin is based must by law have at least 96% vol, stem exclusively from agricultural products, and must not carry any foreign off-flavors. At Windspiel and Lantenhammer, it comes from potatoes; at other houses, from grain.
A liqueur starts at 15% vol but requires at least 100 grams of sugar or other sweetening ingredients per liter. If its alcohol comes solely from gin, it may be called gin liqueur. At 20% vol, the gin liqueur with yuzu from Kakuzo runs orange-yellow and opaque into the glass.
Heath juniper, grapefruit, and raspberry in German gin, alongside gin liqueur
Right at the front of the shelf is the Heide Gin, a gin from the juniper heath, where its berries grow wild and are hand-picked. Grapefruit and lemon play alongside, with an earthy-mineral tone underneath. Through a fund, the Sasse fine distillery gives something back to the heath. Just behind it on the shelf follows the gin liqueur, in which yuzu and mandarin come together—fruity, tart, sweet, and ultimately a bit bitter.
After that comes a Pink Gin in the literal sense: the Pink Grapefruit from Windspiel, delicate pink in the glass and with exactly the legal minimum alcohol content. A distillate from the fruit gives it a tart-sweet note, and it turns out semi-dry, as a gin without the "Dry" label. In addition, Windspiel offers a gin with coffee, for which Arabica from the Fazenda Caxambu is used, spicy and with caramel-like roasted notes.
There is also a lot of fruit in both gins from the Panama Papers brand, Citris and Rubus, both with 42% vol. For every bottle of Citris, 100 grams of citrus fruits from Calabria and Sicily are co-distilled, along with lemongrass and cardamom. For the gin with raspberries, it is 200 grams of raspberries per bottle, with lavender and gooseberry, and in the glass, it smells of dark forest berries and orange blossom.
One bottle on the shelf consciously avoids the name "gin" and is called Don't call me Gin. For this, Jörg Geiger combines an apple brandy made from meadow fruit with juniper from the high valleys of the Swabian Alb and 78 botanicals, including meadowsweet, Douglas fir tips, and lemon verbena. The result is distilled four times and stored in a clay jug. Legally, it is a spirit, because for a gin, the neutral alcohol is missing, and a fruit brandy is not allowed to have added aromas.
From the Saar comes a German gin containing wine: Ferdinand's Saar Dry Gin. More than 30 botanicals, most of them homegrown, come together in it, plus Riesling from the Saarburger Rausch.
With gin, first the style counts, then the aroma, finally the glass
Anyone looking for a gin at nur Gutes first decides on the style—between London Dry Gin, Dry Gin, a gin without the designation, and gin liqueur. London Dry Gin and Dry Gin are the dry ones; a gin without the designation can turn out softer, and the gin liqueur brings sweetness and less alcohol.
Second comes the aroma that stands alongside the juniper, and here the varieties are categorized by families. Citrus and tea are showcased by Kakuzo in its Organic Dry Gin with Satsuma mandarin and yuzu. Meadows and herbs are brought by the gin with hay flowers and hops from Lantenhammer; cool freshness by the gin with Moroccan mint from Skin Gin. Roots and spices are in the Gin Seng with gentian and ginger.
Finally, the glass decides whether the gin goes into a long drink glass with tonic, neat in a tumbler, or in a cocktail. First the style, then the aroma alongside the juniper, lastly the glass—anyone who follows this rule will find their gin at nur Gutes.
Those who choose gin liqueur for the style will find, next to the yuzu from Kakuzo, the Saar Quince from Ferdinand's. It stands golden in the glass, infused with Muscat quinces in the house's Saar Dry Gin and intended as a tribute to Sloe Gin, the British liqueur made from blackthorn sloes steeped in gin.
Gin distilleries whose signature can be tasted alongside the juniper
Heiko Hoos distills his London Gin in Karlsruhe himself, lets it rest for several weeks afterwards, and bottles it unfiltered. Alongside the juniper, you can taste pine buds, chamomile, and marjoram—resinous and bright.
Other houses divide the work between concept and still. For Martin Birk Jensen, Arndt Weßel distills the seven botanicals of Skin Gin in the Alte Land, each individually, from coriander from Vietnam to the peels of lime and lemon. Thus, seven distillates are created, which ultimately become a single gin.
Bartenders Leopold Langer in Ludwigsburg and Alexander Mayer in Freiburg developed Citris and Rubus with Florian Faude in the Kaiserstuhl region. Paul and Marc from Kakuzo have their Organic Dry Gin distilled according to their own recipe in a traditional distillery.
At Marzadro in Trentino, where grappa is usually at home, Leonardo Veronesi made the first attempts for the Luz in 2013. Nine regional plants are included, among them laurel, woodruff, and lemon. Each plant is infused individually, and distillation takes place in a classic thousand-liter still.
Far up in the north, in Töre, Dennis Bejedal founded his distillery in 2016. Birch leaves, mountain angelica, and Timut pepper accompany the juniper in his Mountain Dry Gin—fresh and citrusy until the pepper tingles at the end.
Tim Steglich had the idea for the Illusionist in 2015 in Munich, together with Max Muggenthaler. In Berlin, Christina Jagla runs her house, and her Gin Seng is based on seven-times distilled wheat alcohol and carries 50% vol. At Rüdiger Sasse in Schöppingen, gin and herbal juniper spirits are created with berries from the heath. Finally, the Josef Gin bears the first name of the man who founded Lantenhammer.
Dry Gin belongs in tonic, gin liqueur on ice
A London Dry Gin is always a Dry Gin, but the reverse does not apply. In tonic, what counts in the end is more about which aroma a gin brings along. Take a dry tonic, plenty of ice, and a garnish that picks up on this aroma. Grapefruit belongs with Heide Gin and Mountain Dry Gin, orange with the London Gin from Hoos and Gin Seng, rosemary with Luz and the Pink Grapefruit from Windspiel.
Then the ice clinks, the tonic sparkles upward, and the zest releases its fragrance before the first sip. The tonic turns the Illusionist pink as soon as its acidity is added, and for this play of colors, a glass that you can hold up to the light is worth it.
You can also drink the Luz, the Josef Gin, and the Gin Seng neat—in a tumbler on ice or without. A scent of pine needles and forest berries rises from the Josef Gin, and with a red vermouth and a red bitter, you turn it into a Negroni. The Luz, on the other hand, you take for a Martini.
Pour the Yuzu from Kakuzo with tonic or mix it into a Yuzu Sour, and neat it goes over a large ice cube. Jörg Geiger sees his spirit from the clay jug enjoyed neat or combined with one of his non-alcoholic Priseccos.
If you want it to taste like juniper without the alcohol, you will find that among the non-alcoholic spirits, because only that which reaches the minimum strength may bear the name gin.
Grapefruit in summer, baked apple in Advent, tasting bottles as gifts
As soon as the evenings grow long, the long drink glass belongs to grapefruit—the Pink Grapefruit from Windspiel just as much as the one from Hoos with 30.5% vol. For this, Heiko Hoos infuses his London Gin with grapefruit peel and adds fresh juice, and the result is delicious ice-cold, even neat. For Father's Day, a strong Dry Gin almost gifts itself.
When it gets dark early, the Christmas edition from Windspiel comes to the table. Beside the juniper, it tastes of baked apple and vanilla, cinnamon and roasted hazelnut, and gold leaf shimmers in the glass. The Älgörtsglögg from Dennis Bejedal, on the other hand, carries the meadowsweet in its name, plus gin, cardamom, and star anise, and you drink it cold instead of hot.
A gin as a gift comes with its own "dress" in the case of Skin Gin. It is a hand-wrapped, embossed paper skin used to distinguish the editions of the same gin: reptile brown, white, or anthracite gray.
For getting to know them, there are 50-milliliter sizes, such as a tasting bottle with ginseng root, and 200-milliliter sizes of the Saar Dry Gin and both Hoos gins. In the Best of Bavaria tasting set, the Josef Gin is one of four miniatures alongside a Williams pear brandy, a whisky, and a rum.
The juniper for the Heide Gin grows in the County of Bentheim, where our shop in Nordhorn is also located. Thus, the berries of our best-selling gin come from the neighborhood. Good things are sometimes very close by.
