Thursday, September 3, 2009

New gin gets a grand putdown


Back in September I wrote about Brockmans Gin, the newest spirit about to be loosed upon the bar and club scene in the UK.

I have yet to try it, since it's generally available only in the UK, but I found that a commentary from the editors of CLASS magazine, dedicated to bar culture, caught my attention more than any bottle would.

They wrote:

“In the last issue of CLASS magazine we made a decision based entirely on good will -- someone obviously caught Simon [editor Simon Difford] soon after his 4 p.m. refreshing beer. As a favour to a then-unheard-of gin company we ran a page of advertising for free as they had already paid the previous publisher. We had just got our baby back and we were feeling charitable.

"Since running the advertisement, we have had the misfortune to taste their ‘gin’ and our notes are as follows:

"The producers of Brockmans take a traditional distillate made by distilling neutral spirits with fairly classic botanicals and then (in our opinion) ruin it by cold compounding a berry essence. The result is a spirit that smells more reminiscent of boiled sweets than gin. As for the palate, if you were tasting Brockmans we very much doubt you would mistake it for a gin. Why did they add that fruit essence but not a simple apostrophe? We consider it shameful to the wider gin category to label this a gin, let alone a 'premium gin.'

"We won’t be accepting this brand’s advertisements at any price. Brockmans is barred from CLASS.”

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