Gin Distillery Tour

For our scheduled group activity today, we went to the City of London gin distillery for a tour and tasting. 

Exterior

Four gin samples

The distillery was in the basement of a building, so it was nice and dark and cozy, compared to the slight rain outside. We each sat down in front of 4 small glasses (snifters?) of gin, and the tour guide started by telling us about the history of gin in London. A lot of this was a repeat from what we had learned yesterday in the food tour, but it was still interesting to hear from a slightly different perspective. Essentially, all the working class people in London used to be addicted to gin and would have an insane amount of super strong gin every day. Thus, they didn't do their jobs well and all their kids were dying. The government decided to make beer more popular by removing the tax. Eventually, gin came back into popularity, and now beer and gin are both popular. While the guide was explaining this, we each got a gin and tonic to drink and try. He had us smell different botanicals (juniper berries, coriander seeds, and some sort of bark), and see if we could recognize them in the gin. The first gin we tried was their normal one, and he described it as light and fruity. The second was their strongest gin, which was apparently about 55%. The gin that everyone was drinking back when London all had a drinking problem was about 80%, and they were drinking pints of it, which sounds crazy. The third gin was more botanical vs fruity (according to the guide; I don't have super good tastebuds apparently) and the fourth one was black currant flavored. After, we got to take a little tour of where they make their gin, and got an explanation of how it works. It is made in huge copper jugs, and is condensed into the top of the jug, where it then pours out into a tube and into a storage container. Finally, the guide let us each get samples of any flavors of gin, and I tried black cherry, which was pretty good but tasted kind of weird with the more citrusy tonic water. 

It is hard to believe this was our second to last day in London, but I'm glad I got to spend it with the group and later watching Wicked, which was amazing.