When we think of spirits for sipping sans mixer, gin seldom makes the list, and for good reason: most gin is so powerful it overwhelms the palate. Still, given the category’s widespread popularity, it’s perhaps surprising that someone didn’t make a serious case for a sipping gin sooner.
Leave it to Desmond Payne, the master distiller at London’s Beefeater who has more than 40 years of experience making gin — 25 at Plymouth, the past 18 at Beefeater. This fall, Payne’s unique Burrough’s Reserve gin, named for Beefeater founder James Burrough, lands in the U.S. with one ambition: to be sipped, not mixed.
“We wanted to develop a gin that challenged some of the preconceptions about gin: how it is made, and also how and when it should be drunk,” says Payne, whose reputation for drinking ice-cold gin-and-tonics precedes him. “It is principally developed for discerning drinkers who understand the subtle qualities of fine spirits, but who are not tied to strict rules of what to drink and when. It is a gin for free-thinkers.”
It looks and tastes the part too. Packaged in an elegant, round bottle reminiscent of an expensive liqueur, Burrough’s Reserve shares the same basic recipe as Beefeater, but is siphoned into a special, small-capacity still dating to the distillery’s 19th-century heyday. The small-batch gin is then rested in French oak casks where it picks up a soft tint and subtle tannins. The gin that makes it into the bottle is a select blend from these mellowed casks, which is corked at 43 proof.
On the tongue, it’s smooth, warm, round and subtle with a pleasantly gin-y aftertaste, but no sharp bite — barely recognizable as gin other than its familiarly clean smell. It is, perhaps, the best gin you’ve never tasted, and for $70 a bottle, it had better be. Payne recommends drinking it chilled (not iced), with dried fruits or cheese after dinner, as you would a fine brandy or port. Time will tell whether consumers will catch on, but Payne hopes the product will sell itself.
“Although gin is nearly always consumed with something else added — from the world-favorite gin and tonic to more complex cocktails — the mark of a good-quality gin is that it has integrity and balance of flavors on its own,” Payne says, explaining that when he tastes gin professionally, he adds nothing more than a drop of water to draw out the flavor — a ritual of many scotch drinkers. “This experience of pure gin inspired me to develop Burrough’s Reserve as a sipping gin that needed no additional endorsement.”