‘God save the gin’ – what does the future hold?

Can gin withstand the continued influx of new releases – and if it continues, will additional category protection be required?

Over the past decade, the gin category has exploded, and brands are now pouring out of every continent. Markets such as the UK and Spain took to the category with gusto, while other markets – the US, for one – have been slower to embrace the juniper-forward spirit.

As the category has grown, however, questions have come about regarding regulations and reputation. Has the sector reached a point of needing more legal protection, such as geographical indications (GI)? Do the rules stipulating how the spirit should be made need updating? And, frankly, do consumers care?

“Really the main difference between most London Dry gins is the botanical selection,” said Jake Burger, co-founder of Portobello Road gin, during a seminar at Tales of the Cocktail 2024, called ‘God Save the Gin’. The panel discussion was chaired by Bex Almqvist, CEO of Almqvist Destilleri, and featured Sebastian Hamilton-Mudge, co-founder of CandraDrinks.com and Kina Consultancy & Creative Agency, and Desmond Payne, Beefeater Gin’s master distiller emeritus.

Payne said: “It’s a very broad church, gin. There’s a lot of space to be very creative within the definitions; they define what something should be – but they need to be looked at from time to time to keep up with what’s happening.”

Flavoured gins have been on the rise in the past few years – and the figures show they are proving popular with consumers. Almqvist posed the questions: “Do jalapeño and mango belong in gin? What is flavoured gin?”

“I don’t enjoy those typical flavours and sweetened gins, but clearly there is demand for them,” noted Burger. “Most of them probably don’t deserve to bear the good name ‘gin’. There should be some regulation there.”

Payne – whose product development has included peach and raspberry, and lemon-flavoured iterations of Beefeater – continued: “All gins are flavoured, but it’s not defined. It means gins all over the place have got away from the point, and there’s no longer any evidence of juniper. It might be a really nice drink but it stops being gin. Think of another name for it.”

Is the revolution over?

If the consensus is that the category has reached a threshold meaning protection is needed to ensure the quality of its future, how can that happen?

Burger considers implementing ‘NOMs’ – the four-digit numbers on the back of every Tequila bottle, which represent the distillery at which the liquid was made.

“I think a NOM system, like in Tequila, could work, so we know where it’s produced and the details of production. Something like that would help,” Burger said.

Payne noted: “We do have to have some kind of definition so we have parameters about what you should be doing.”

With so many brands on the market now and an evidently oversaturated category, is this the end of the gin revolution?

“I think the revolution is over,” said Payne. “It’s settling down. Consumers are leaving the category because there are so many types of gin. So it is really important that we make sure gin is still gin. No juniper, no gin.”