"tanqueray" news and stories

Besides being a great addition to your beef marinades, juniper berries have long been used for medicinal purposes: fighting off infections, stimulating the kidneys, and even serving as an early Viagra. References to juniper use in health tonics have been found as far back as the 1200's. Franciscus Sylvius de la Boe, a professor at a Dutch university in the 1600's, often gets credited for mixing juniper with alcohol, creating the world's first gin -- however, juniper and alcohol had already made friends at least a hundred years earlier according to old Dutch distilling records.

Genever is one of the earliest styles of gin. Since 2008, the EU has granted genever a protected status, regulating where and how it can be made. Most genever comes from Holland; however Belgium and Department 59 (Nord) Department 62 (Pas-de-Calais) of France as well as the Nordrhein-Westfalen (bordering Belgium and Holland) and Niedersachsen (north of Nordrhein) areas of Germany are also allowed production rights. Genever styles range from a light almost vodka-like flavor to sweetened, fruity, almost liqueur-like bottlings. I spent a month in Holland last year "studying" genever, so let me just say there's not space here to outline in detail all the wonderful variations of this spirit. The brands you might find in the US include Zuidam, Boomsma, Schlichte Steinhäger, and the big daddy Bols.

More after the jump...

Tanqueray London Dry Gin is 94.6 proof/47.3 abv. and has a nice juniper flavor with sharp hints of spice and citrus. When sipped straight it has a sprightly juniper bite on the tip of the tongue. Once watered down, more of the botanical flavors are released and you get the addition of many mild floral and citrus notes. Some of the botanicals used are Juniper, coriander, angelica, and my guess is some form of citrus. It is quadruple distilled, first in a continuous column still, and then a final time in a pot still.

Tanqueray is based on a 200 year old recipe and is the number one imported gin to the U.S. Supposedly the Tanqueray recipe has been carefully guarded since it was first made and there are only four people in the world today that can make Tanqueray. This gin is a genuine, classic gin that tastes like gin should.

Fun facts: The late Johnnie Johnson (known best as Chuck Berry's piano player) wrote a song named Tanqueray. It appears on the album Blue Hand Johnnie which was released in 1991. At Rhapsody you can hear the original and several other versions of Tanqueray, as well as other sings with the same name, which are all really, really great. Well, maybe not in the case of "interesting" song called Poon Tanqueray by Rapnexx.

Tanqueray No. Ten is bottled at 94.6 proof / 47.3 abv, and was first released in the year 2000. It already has a big fan base who have nicknamed it T-10. In some ways it is quite different from the norm in gin because it is made with whole, fresh picked fruit and botanicals, not dried. They include grapefruit, orange, lime, juniper, and chamomile among others. This is one of the new style gins that actually goes back to the genever roots where gin started, having big bold, sweet flavors. It is a heavy citrus and fruit forward gin with a bright aroma, and has a syrupy/glycerin consistency to it, making it feel very full and fat in your mouth. It's a gin with a lot of body to it. The T-10 flavors are very good, but I feel that the fruit and citrus overwhelm the juniper. I think gin must have juniper as at least a top note if not the main one. While at first I didn't care for it and was knocked back by the flavor and consistency, T-10 does grow on you, as long as you are not doing side by side taste tests with other gins. After a bit you don't notice the sweetness as much, and the thick body holds the aftertaste on your tongue quite well. Because of this it has a finish that lasts an extended period of time.

T-10 makes only a decent martini, but it makes a great Gin and Tonic, and is even better suited to drinking on the rocks or straight up after being shaken and strained. The addition of water from the ice opens up the botanicals quite nicely to show off the flavors brilliantly. Mixing this gin with anything besides a good tonic seems a waste to me, but then I feel that way about any really good gin, as you will hear me say time and again. I was only slightly surprised when I heard that if you replace the vodka in a Cosmopolitan with T-No. 10 you get a much better drink.