If you don’t have a great gin for cocktails, you don’t have a great gin.
Let’s wind back and explain. There’s a familiar scene that plays out in every distillery: the moment when the spirit leaves the still, crystal clear, fragrant and full of potential. As gin makers, we’re eager to sip this newborn spirit, let it dance on our palate, and celebrate the botanical symphony we’ve carefully crafted.
Distillers often judge both theirs and other producer’s creations by sipping the liquid neat. For obvious reasons, Quality Control and Sensory Assessment checks are also done neat (and cut with water).
But here’s the reality check — most gin doesn’t get sipped neat.
Instead, it finds itself mixed, diluted, and sometimes dominated by other potent ingredients in the vast world of cocktails.
Thus, the challenge during new product development is to not only to produce a great gin, but also to ensure that it works in the context of its ultimate destination — the cocktail glass.
Distillers need to build new gin recipes and new ideas with cocktails in mind.
So, how do you go about designing a gin to thrive under the variable conditions it will meet in its journey from still to glass? The answer lies in the simple concept of ‘testing in context’.
This approach invites you to simulate the different scenarios in which your gin will find itself and evaluate how its profile adapts. It’s so simple. Yet, at least a third of all new gins launches don’t do this until it’s too late and can’t change, and as a direct result fail once in market.
Let’s explore a couple of ways to get a good idea of whether you need to return to the recipe charts, or if you’ve made something fit for purpose.
Water cuts: Evaluating ABV profiles
Alcohol by volume (ABV) plays a significant role in the taste and texture of gin. With different ABVs, the volatility of the solution changes, which influences the way we perceive the botanical flavours.
One effective way to test your gin’s flexibility is to perform incremental water cuts. Not just in half to taste what it’s like. Dilute it progressively by 5% ABV starting at 40%. Go all the way down to 10%, which is still stronger than the standard G&T.
At each stage, taste your gin. How does it fare? How did the botanicals survive the cut? Did they retain their vibrancy or did they retreat into the background? Did new flavours emerge or existing ones amplify? Do you appreciate the change, or does it contradict your vision for the gin?
It’s a quick and easy test to carry out on all NPD. You don’t have to make assumptions of what the gin is being mixed in (as it’s only water) and it’s easy to do replicable Sensory Assessment on it.
This process will help set the ideal bottling strength. It will also allow you to assess whether you have got the balance right, the intensity peaks dialled in and the flavour sequence running at the correct tempo. If you don’t, adapt the grams and the distillation process as you’ve got no chance it’s going to work once the likes of tonic or vermouth get involved.
Setting the starting ABV: Factor in the commercials
Determining your gin’s starting ABV is a crucial step in your distilling process.
It’s not just about taste — although that’s certainly a key component and the only one that matters to distillers — it’s also about factors like the cost of excise duty and what that means for your bottle’s eventual shelf price.
Design you NPD with a target ABV in mind before you start distilling, rather than make an amazing gin and see it pushed out of the optimal zone due to pricing pressures.
There are also market expectations to take into consideration.
Many Gins in the USA are around the 45% ABV mark (duty tax is low), so being at 39% might be quite an unusual sensory experience for drinkers. The minimum legal amount is the likes of South Africa is 43% – are you aware of the expectations and legal requirements of where you are planning to exporting to?
If your plan is to be at one ABV in one market and another somewhere else (for example Beefeater UK is 40% ABV, America is 47%. Gordon’s is 37.5% in the UK, 47.5% in the US) – does your recipe allow you to do that or do you need to go back to the drawing board?
Finding the balance between these considerations is where the mastery of high quality NPD for gin lies.
It always pays to have those involved in the field (bartenders, buyers, etc) to weigh in their opinions at an early stage and get real life feedback from those selling it in. This will guide you in choosing an ABV that optimises the sensory experience to specific market expectations and takes into account the financial aspects that might compromise an otherwise great liquid.
Mixer tests: Surviving the cocktail
Once you’ve navigated through the water cuts and understood what the optimum bottling strength is, it’s time to introduce your gin to its cocktail companions.
Mix your gin with classic staples like tonic water or vermouth and observe its evolution. Does it stand tall, harmonising with the mixers while still maintaining its unique character, or does it dissolve into anonymity? What notes become prominent, and which ones subside?
While conducting these tests, keep in mind that the goal is not to judge whether the mix is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Instead, it’s about understanding how your gin changes in different contexts and deciding if those transformations align with your intentions.
The choice of words above wasn’t flippant either. It needs to thrive in cocktails that are well made, but it needs to survive those that aren’t.
Campari, Vermouth, liqueurs, over-poured tonic, heavy handed garnishes… Assessing if you’ve made a good good gin for cocktails involves assessing if it can survive a thrashing.
You need balance and nuance – but it can’t be too subtle. So many gins get drowned out and too many distillers make the mistake of assuming people will give their product the time of day it needs to be fully understood.
When evaluating if your NPD is a good gin for cocktails, don’t forget the context around how they are being consumed! Drinking them is not all about flavour. While you are focussing your attention on what it tastes like, the drink in hand is not often the focus of the drinker’s attention – the context of where, when, and who they are enjoying it with is.
In musical terms, more often than not, you’re in the background. Set the atmosphere, build the layers and add to the interest, but assume that most people aren’t paying devout to the words…
Refining your recipe: Take control of the quality by rebalancing it
No gin exists in a vacuum. It’s part of a spectrum of experiences, each influenced by the way the drinker chooses to enjoy it — neat, on the rocks, in a cocktail, and so on. That varies from place to place.
No gin is ever successful in the on-trade if it only works in one type of cocktail. So even if the brief is to be the best for a Martini, Bees Knees, Negroni etc. served in a specific way – that doesn’t mean it can be bad in a different drink. Take control of your NPD and avoid a one trick pony at all costs.
Accept that when the task is to be unique and innovative (and not a classic London Dry), it’s then unlikely to work superbly over every occasion and every cocktail. That’s okay. When the task is geared to deliver a gin for a specific signature serve, that tilts the scale of what you have to make. But as distillers, we must ensure it is versatile enough – and you have to find a compromise.
Don’t rely on marketing campaigns to hammer a message about how it needs to be served with a specific garnish, or a specific type of mixer partner. Garnishes and specific partnerships are a way to take something from great to unforgettable, not to make something palatable. Do the work and rebalance the recipe, even if that means taking some of the absolute edge out of a specific serve. It will pay off in the long run.
Testing in context
By using ‘Testing in Context’ as a tool for NPD refinement, you can ensure your gin remains true to its identity, while being adaptable to a wide array of drinking preferences.
If you can make a good gin for cocktails and one that mixes well with other ingredients, you’ll be one step closer to commercial success. If you know that it maintains it’s desired profile at different ABV’s, it’ll be more versatile…
In the end, this meticulous process of crafting, testing, and rebalancing will allow you to create a gin that is more than just a fleeting offering on shelves. It becomes a versatile companion to the drinker’s journey, delivering the taste profile you’ve envisioned across various contexts and scenarios.
Making a gin for cocktails forces you to think through the context of use. It asks questions about rout to market, target audiences, serves, campaigns and more. As a result, you’ll be able to make a gin that is fit for purpose and product built longevity.
