"Flavoured" gin - idiot question.....

[phantom]

Beloved has been gifted a bottle of blackberry and elderflower gin.

"Normal" gin, fine. Tonic, even bitter lemon, but how the hell are these modern "craft" type flavoured gins served ?

[Mash]

With tonic in the same way I thought...

[Jennysgin]

Is it gin, or gin liqueur?
If it's liqueur it may be better on its own

[Easydrinker]

Beloved has been gifted a bottle of blackberry and elderflower gin.

"Normal" gin, fine. Tonic, even bitter lemon, but how the hell are these modern "craft" type flavoured gins served ?

With as much pretentiousness as you can bally-well find

Robert.

[gaza the instructor]

Gin liqueur. bottle in the fridge and serve with ice.
There are nearly as may different Tonics as Gins. lovely.

[phantom]

Will check when I get home. Think............ it's flavoured gin, not "gin liqueur".............

[BlindXX]

OK, to get technical -
Gin - legally has to be 37.5% or above and predominately taste of Juniper. There are different subsections such as London Dry, Old Tom, Genevre, plus more and each has its own legally defining requirement. Things have changed slightly over the last few years to include "contemporary gin" which is a gin where juniper is not as prominent in the flavour profile, and generally includes all flavoured gins.

I distil a contemporary gin, (almost a London dry - distillate is over 70%, nothing but water added after distillation but juniper is not the prominent flavour, mine is more citrus).

A gin liqueur will be around 20% ish (certainly lower than 37,5%) and is best drunk neat in my experience. A flavoured gin, like all gins, should be drunk with whatever you feel it goes with. It's way too easy to get pretentious. Citrus generally goes well with herb flavours (for me), Japan likes to mix gin with a 50/50 mix of tonic and soda, I like gin neat. It's all relative. Generally you try to balance your palate. If you find the gin sweet, a bitter plain tonic is good. Likewise, lemonade isn't off the table if you find the gin too bitter. There is no right or wrong, its personal. Arguably the best way is with champagne and lemon juice (French 75) but that gets you Royally Effed in a very short space of time.

I apologise, I've had a bottle of wine and feel the need to vent about gin.

[phantom]

Well on closer inspection, it did turn out to be a liqueur type one (noticed when I spotted the 20% marked on the label - and the liqueur thing was in very small print that took a bit of finding).

Anyway, it also had a "serving suggestion" that it was well matched with Prosecco. Beloved is a teacher, so she gets a fair few "gizzits" this time of year (well as the kids leave to go up), so a bottle of Prosecco wasn't a challenge and both went down very well with F&C's last night.

Definitely enough to get a bit of a "speed wobble"...............

The last inch in the gin bottle will be drank straight today.........