Hendrick's
Hendrick's is a brand of gin . The spirit , which was first launched on the US market in 2000 , differs from classic gins in that the juniper aroma , which is typical of gin, is only weakly pronounced. The flavoring with cucumber and rose leaf essences is characteristic. The manufacturer is William Grant & Sons, a company known primarily for its Scotch whiskeys .
history
The imprint “Est. 1886 "(short for English established , implemented ' , founded') on the bottle suggests that it was a recipe from the 19th century and Gin have a correspondingly long tradition. In fact, it is only the year that William Grant founded his first whiskey distillery and thus laid the foundation for the company that Hendrick's Gin produces today.
The history of Hendrick's did not begin until the end of the 20th century when whiskey distiller David Steward, master blender at the Balvenie distillery , owned by William Grant & Sons , visited the garden of Janet Sheed Roberts, an elderly granddaughter of the company's founder William Grant, with some cucumber sandwiches and a glass of gin, the idea is said to have come up to flavor a gin with cucumber and roses. Under the leadership of Lesley Gracie and John Ross and in collaboration with the Scotch Whiskey Research Institute , the recipe for the gin was subsequently developed. "We had this very British idea of people drinking a gin and tonic in their rose garden and eating cucumber sandwiches with it, and that's when we noticed how well these flavors go together and with the gin," Gracie said in an interview in 2014. Two old stills, which Charles Gordon, a great-grandson of the company's founder, had already acquired at an auction in 1966, were restored for production: a copper pot still from the 1860s, the so-called “Bennet Still”, and a 1948 “ Carter-Head Still ”from the manufacturer John Dore & Co., of which there are only very few copies left today. The principle of the Carter Head still goes back to the Carter Head brothers, apprentices of Aeneas Coffey , who invented the well-known column still in the 19th century .
Production began in 1999 and was launched in the United States in 2000 . Since 2003 Hendrick's has also been available in Great Britain and Spain , followed by other countries such as Germany, where the gin is distributed by Campari Deutschland GmbH , a subsidiary of the Italian spirits group Davide Campari-Milano .
Manufacturing
Hendrick's Gin is made in the Girvan distillery in south-west Scotland using neutral alcohol and eleven herbs and spices known as botanicals . In addition to the classic gin botanicals like juniper berries , coriander seeds , angelica , orange - and lemon peels , these are orris root , chamomile , pepper berries , elderberry , yarrow and caraway . As with distilled gin the botanicals are usual with burned , but this is done at Hendrick's in two separate processes in the historic, artisanal copper pot still - stills : First, the elderly will Bennet Still with 55-60% vol. Filled with diluted neutral alcohol, in which the mentioned botanicals steep for 24-36 hours and then to a distillate with initially 92% vol., later about 75% vol. distilled, which has a heavy, oily character with a clear juniper note. A second still, the so-called Carter-Head , is also filled with neutral alcohol and water (55–60% vol.). Again, the same botanicals are used, albeit in different proportions. This time, however, they are not added to the liquid in the kettle, but rather hung in a copper basket in the resulting distillation vapors, the so-called vapor infusion method (steam infusion method , a form of drag distillation ). The alcoholic vapors primarily absorb the lighter, sweet and floral aromas of the botanicals, so that the result is about 350 liters of "cut" (heart) with about 80% vol. - is very different from the one from the Bennet boiler. The two distillates are now blended with one another, supposedly in roughly equal proportions. For flavoring, essences from Damascus roses and Dutch cucumber are used and added afterwards, as these botanicals would not withstand the heat of the burning process. The oil pressed from the rose petals is dissolved in alcohol, the cucumbers are mixed with water and their aromas are extracted at 0 ° C with the help of a cold distillation process. Overall, production takes place in comparatively small batches of around 800 to 1000 liters each. The water with which the gin is brought to a drinking strength of 44% vol. ( USA , Spain and other countries) comes from the Penwhapple Reservoir near the distillery. In other countries, including Great Britain , Hendrick's Gin is made with a slightly reduced alcohol content of 41.4% vol. offered.
Hendrick's Gin is a distilled gin ( distilled gin ) in the sense of EU spirits regulation . The quality level London Gin or London Dry Gin , on the other hand, is not achieved because, among other things, subsequent aromatization of the distillate is excluded, so all botanicals would have to be used in the distillation process without exception. Hendrick's is a representative of the "New Western Dry Gins". This group, which is not specifically defined by law, includes gins in which the classic and actually gin-typical juniper taste takes second place to other aromas.
marketing
The brand identity was developed by the US company Quaker City Mercantile . It is characterized by a strong emphasis on supposedly British characteristics such as eccentricity and eccentricity , for example through recourse to the advertising slogans “A most unusual gin” and “It is not for everyone” (“Nothing for everyone”) the Victorian age and stylistic elements of steampunk . The shape of the bottle made of dark brown colored glass with a cork stopper is reminiscent of historical apothecary bottles. On the website and in image films, illustrations are used that look like copperplate engravings from the 19th century and are reminiscent of the cut figures in animations by Monty Python , advertising films are based in part on early silent films and drawn cucumbers appear again and again. At the company's marketing events, martinis were served with Hendrick's gin in teacups instead of the usual cocktail bowls. As a signature drink which is considered Hendrick's gin and tonic , is what is not, as usual, garnished with lemon zest, but with cucumber slices.
reception
When it was launched on the market in 2000, Hendrick's Gin was one of the first “premium gins” in the upper price segment and is said to have contributed significantly to the gin boom at the beginning of the 21st century. At the San Francisco Spirits Competition , the product achieved a gold medal in the year it was launched, cocktail historian David Wondrich described it as the most influential gin of the last 25 years, and in 2007 the Wall Street Journal awarded the title “World's Best Gin”.
literature
- Simon Difford: Diffordsguide Gin . 1st Edition, Odd Firm of Sin, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-9556276-1-3 . On Hendrick's Gin: pp. 226-231 (English).
- gaz regan: the bartender's GIN compendium . Xlibris (self-published), USA 2009, ISBN 978-1-4415-4688-3 (hardcover), -6 (softcover). On Hendrick's Gin: pp. 136-143 (English).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Simon Difford: Diffordsguide Gin . 1st Edition, Odd Firm of Sin, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-9556276-1-3 , pp. 226-231.
- ↑ a b Peter Badenhop: “Everything works as long as it doesn't kill anyone”. In: FAZ.net . August 21, 2014, accessed on July 16, 2015 (interview with Hendrick's master distiller Lesley Gracie).
- ↑ Our peculiar past ( Memento of the original from March 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Product history on the manufacturer's official brand website, accessed July 11, 2015.
- ↑ a b c Hendricks - a highly unusual gin - Campari Germany. In: campari-deutschland.de. October 13, 2014, accessed July 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Hendrick's Gin - Interview with Brand Ambassador CoCo Prochorowski. In: about-drinks.com. January 15, 2015, accessed July 11, 2015 .
- ↑ a b gaz regan: the bartender's GIN compendium . Xlibris (self-published), USA 2009, ISBN 978-1-4415-4688-3 (hardcover), -6 (softcover). On Hendrick's Gin: pp. 136-143 (English).
- ↑ a b Stefan Gabányi in: Charles Schumann : Schumann's Bar . Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2011 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-89910-416-5 . Commodity Science, p. 327.
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 110/2008 ("EU Spirits Regulation") , accessed on July 5, 2015, Appendix 1, No. 22.
- ↑ a b Santiago Campillo-Lundbeck: Monty Python Hommage: The curious hidden object universe of Hendrick's Gin. In: horizont.net. December 11, 2014, accessed July 16, 2015 .
