Ingredients

old tom gin

Also known as “tom gin”. The history of English gin up into the 1800s is complex and gruesome—the following paraphrases research and writing by David Wondrich that you can find elsewhere with full detail. In a nutshell, gin was a huge and ubiquitous business in England, but the product began as rough bulk grain spirit, was flavored by specialist rectifiers, and ultimately sweetened and diluted by retailers to make it cheap and ready-to-drink. (We’re talking barrels of gin here, not the neatly labeled-and-sealed bottles we are now accustomed to.) Quality was highly variable, at best. The term “Old Tom” traces to around 1800 at the rectifier Hodges, whose partner, Thomas Chamberlain, developed a consistent, premium cordial gin at-or-near the maximum legal proof. This stuff became popular with Hodges’ retailers and “Old Tom” became an industry term for the best available gin—a de facto standard, but unfortunately for Hodges, not a brand or trademark. The term made its way into retail lingo first, and, later, onto bottle labels. Old Tom gin remained the desirable style of English gin up until the 1890s or so, when it was supplanted almost completely by London Dry Gin. By that point, the only technical difference between London Dry Gin and Old Tom was sugar. Consequently, it is possible to compound a serviceable Old Tom Gin from a 750ml bottle of 47º London Dry and five teaspoons of sugar that have been dissolved in about 1/2 oz water. Today, a growing number of distillers produce excellent Old Tom Gin with deliberate intent, meaning various decisions influence the resulting product to make it the best it can be, not merely cheap and ready-to-drink. Old Tom Gin largely sat out the entire 20th Century. You are encouraged to try substituting a good contemporary Old Tom Gin for the dry gin in pretty much any mixed drink. You may or may not prefer the difference.