Welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat Brophy. I handle specialty spirits here at Binny's. With me today is Greg. Greg Versch, Communications. And Barb. Hi, I'm Barb. I work in wine sales and events. That sounds fun. And Hillary. Also Communications. And we have a special guest today from our Skokie store. We have Shannon here. How are you doing, Shannon? I'm doing wonderful. What do you do at Skokie? I'm the Assistant Manager at Skokie. You are here today to give us a little education on one of your favorite spirits topics. And what is this you want to talk about? Gin. All right. Cool. Gin's cool. I mean, if you're boring, you know, are you going to show us how it's not boring? Yes, I am. I've got a few things here that will brighten your day, I believe. So gin is your kind of go-to for most occasions? For this time of year, I've recently gotten into gin. And it's been very exciting as far as being able to drink it on its own and make some pretty awesome cocktails. Have you recently gotten into it because you've recently become a 65 year old man? Yes, I have my beard starting to come out and whatnot. I've got to say, that's always what I think of. And I think when I talk to other, especially younger people, and I mean younger than me, that's always the impression is like gin, ew, it's for older people. So I think it's really cool that you're going to talk about it today. It's either that or it's 2 AM in a bar, in a really flimsy plastic cup. And they're out of everything else. With ice and a lime wedge. Oh, come on. Gin is, in all fairness, gin's having a renaissance right now. And what bourbon is in our country, gin is in the UK. I mean, there's thousands and thousands of gin brands over there. We are not there yet, but we've never had a better selection of better gin on our shelves. And there's a many, many different styles of gin to explore and many different uses and all kinds of classics. I mean, since the Negroni kind of blew up with the hip crowd, you know, gin has definitely received the attention it deserves. We'll put it that way. I love a Negroni. Am I hip? Yeah, you are now. Well, I mean, his pants are generally too tight and he likes Negroni. I think this is a hard yes. But that's not on purpose. Yeah, I'm accidentally hip. So with that, I'd like to kind of do something I thought would be fun. Two truths and a lie about gin. Okay. So the first one is, Dutch courage was when English shoulders drank before fighting to help calm them down before getting on the battlefield with the Spanish. Gin-soaked refers to a nice bath full of hot gin, and then Mother's Ruin is a British nickname for gin. Which one of those are the truths and which one is the lie? What do you got, Hill? I mean, I know the answer. Oh, well, Hill, you stink at this game. What do you got, Barb? I think Dutch courage is a truth. I've been gin-soaked and it was not in a tub. Wow. Good job, Greg. Yeah, so Greg was drunk at one point in time. So, okay, so you're saying Dutch courage is a truth. What's the other truth? What was the other one? The other truth is Mother's Ruin. Mother's Ruin. British nickname for gin. You have to say it with an accent, though, Shannon. Mother's Ruin. Oh, yes, I've been ruined by Mother. I love accents. Yeah, Dutch courage is a thing. So gin itself dates back to at least the 1600s that we know of. It kind of originated in the Netherlands, and that was when during the, what is it, 80 years war? 80 years war? Yeah, okay, there you go. With the Spanish. The Dutch were fighting the Spanish, the British were helping them, and in order to calm nerves before battles, the soldiers were given gin. It became very popular with the British soldiers. So after the war, they came back to England with a love of gin, introduced gin in the country, and then it really exploded in England. Yeah, so it was 1585. So, Shannon, if you don't mind me asking you a really basic question, pretend I don't know anything about gin, which I don't. What makes gin smell so different and taste so different from vodka? Like, what is the difference? How is it distilled differently? Where does that juniperiness come from, etc.? With gin, juniper needs to be the main floral ingredient that's included for it to be a gin. As far as where it comes through in the distillation process, it is a redistillation. So it's a second distillation in which they include the flavoring of the juniper and then all other botanicals. They just throw it right there in like a big vat? They actually put it in a copper pot still, so it's distilled in the copper pot still. You can use a botanical basket, I believe, and you can put lavender, berry, you can put caraway, coriander, basically whatever you foraged out in the forest or sourced from all over the world. But, you know, common botanicals, citrus peels, like she had mentioned, caraway, licorice root, oris root, angelica root, roots, flowers, spices, but juniper berry, juniper needs to be the dominant botanical legally. Needs to be. Legally, in order to be considered a gin, the prominent flavor needs to be that of juniper. Is that legally in like England or in America? And in America, yeah. So it's an EU thing, a Canadian thing, a US thing. So if I distill something led with a different botanical, then what can I call it? In America, that would fall loosely under distilled spirit specialty, which is kind of a catch-all category for the government. There is some wiggle rooms, you know. Obviously, new American style gin tends to be more citrus forward, but it still has the juniper there. I've tried a gin from the Amalfi Coast in Italy that is super lemon heavy, and it's like lemon and only lemon. We've seen some of those. We had one. I don't know if that's, yeah, Amalfi. I don't know what they're doing to get that on the shelf as gin. You know, I don't think there's not, it's not like there's some bureaucrat in DC who's sniffing every gin that gets a label approval and being like, yes, this is a gin. You know, there's no chance there is any government job that is that fun. All right, so where do we start on our little gin journey? I think I'm going to start with the Boone County Jail Gin from Lebanon. We were there back in, what was it? Last summer sometime, right? Last summer sometime. That's Lebanon, Indiana. Lebanon, Indiana, Lebanon. It is brand new distillery out there. They just basically are getting started. This is a wonderful gin for mixing gin and tonics with. I've been doing it with a little bit of Luxardo Apertivo and a dash of lemon juice, which is really nice and great. So on its own, you get that wonderful juniper note to it. So I'm just going to add that. Luxardo Apertivo, kind of like a Aperol Campari type of clone. It's a little bit sweeter, but it adds a really nice balance and it's nice and pink. You put a little sprig of rosemary in there. So with this one, they are trying to do a little new world inspiration on this. So it's kind of got that London Dry style to it, but they've got a couple secret botanicals that they don't disclose to kind of make it more like an American style. Correct, black pepper. I get pepper and I get some kind of baking spice. Is that like cinnamon nutmeg? Definitely. Cinnamon is a very common gin botanical. They actually include that. It's cinnamon. Nice. Fruit loops? Thanks. Yeah, it does. Fruit loops. There's a fruit quality. So when Shannon mentioned earlier that gin is redistilled, that's important. So gin starts as vodka. I mean, the easiest way to think of this is gin is flavored vodka. So you take a neutral spirit and then you redistill it with your mix of botanicals to create a gin. So like literally spice solids in a bag, in a still. So you can do it that way. Most commonly now you use a gin basket. And now, so Shannon alluded traditionally in a copper pot still, the gin basket would quite literally be a basket that would keep the botanicals hanging in the still. So as the vapor was rising, as the alcohol was vapor was rising out of the boiling wash, it would the vapors pass through this basket of botanicals on their way up the neck of the still and out to the condenser. A modern gin basket, you can't really tell it's there. It's in the line after the vapor rises and falls down the arm and goes to be condensed. There's essentially just, it looks like a big, like a fatter piece of the pipe essentially. And that is a gin basket. And as the vapor condenses back through, it falls through that. Working more like a filter on the way down. So, but different flavors, you have to treat differently. You know, Hendrick's Gin, for example, very popular gin, it prominently features cucumber and rose. They actually make a extract out of a neutral spirit and rose that then gets blended back in after the gin has been distilled through the traditional botanical mix because rose is too delicate and they kept losing it, essentially, during Okay. So Smash cut back to that Far North Spirits episode, right? It wasn't gin, but they were making like a pumpkin pie spice liqueur and he had flavored all of the different flavorings in macerations in different times and then blended them. So like, is anybody doing something like that? Obviously, you're example. Yeah. It happens more often than you think. You know, technically speaking, this is more of a European thing. You can just have a thing labeled gin. That gin is essentially just botanicals are soaked in the neutral spirit, post distillation in a big tank, then it's cut with water and bottled. And over there, if you're making gin the traditional way, in the still, it would be labeled distilled gin. And that's always been the kind of the easy label differentiation for the consumer on what is a high-quality authentic gin and what is kind of like mass-produced crap gin. Similar to like 100% agave tequila. Whenever you're looking, if you want any good tequila, the first thing to look for is 100% agave. And gin, this was more of a thing back in the 50s and 60s when the world was consuming en masse like these cheap crappy spirits. But the first thing you look for is distilled gin. But again, that's more of a European thing. Right on. I think this is a really great start, Shannon. And I agree with Hillary. I get this. I don't know if once it was suggested, I tasted it or it was my own palate. But I definitely get this really playful fruity pebbles thing on the finish, especially. It just kind of sails in this nice lift. And then a big bang of that. It's like the Red Hots candy cinnamon, really specific for me. But I do like that fruitiness. I've never tasted that in gin before. I wonder if it's one of their secret botanicals. Fruity pebbles? It's more specifically even, it's like the powder at the bottom of the bag of fruit. I always stole that away. Oh, come on. Are you one of those people who like pours it into the milk and then just, Oh, it's so good. Gross. Yeah. Are you serious? Yeah. What? Cereal powder. Few people love sugary cold cereal more than me, but the powder, I've always hated. Gag. Shannon, how many botanicals are used per batch? Because I feel like you need a ton to get this intense flavor. I don't believe there's any sort of minimum requirement for the amount of botanicals that are used. You could use juniper and one other botanical if you want to get just a specific flavor profile. Or just juniper. Or just juniper. Yeah. These guys, I want to say, use more than 10. The ones I have listed here are juniper, coriander seed, orange peel, cinnamon, angelica root, galanga root, lemongrass, and then their secret botanical. Did you say galanga? Galangal. Galangal? Galangal is kind of like ginger. What botanicals would you put in your gin? Cereal. I don't know. I'd like to make an everything bagel gin. Oh, hell yeah. Onion. Then mix it with a cream cheese flavored vodka. Yeah. Too much. That's over the line. This is coming from a bunch of people who like cereal dust. That was cool how the room just went, yeah. Well, this is a cool gin. This is easy, approachable. It's 86 proof, so it's not going to get too watered down when you mix it. It seems to me like it's probably got a base of a corn alcohol, because it's got a little more weight to it, and a little tiny touch of like an inherent sweetness in it, but really nice gin. It's on sale right now at your local Binny's for $21.99. Is that all? That's it? Yeah. What a deal. It's a steal. You brought us some cheap ass gin. I brought you some great value. Yeah. This is good gin and good value. Very cool. Thank you. All right, so the next one hails from Fort Collins, Colorado. This is the Old Elk Dry Town Gin, Four Grain Gin. It's 92 proof. The four grains that they're using are rye, wheat, corn and barley. It is unfiltered. Oh, that's interesting. So, like, you're talking about neutral grain spirit, but I never even thought about the grains used in the distillery. Well, yeah, so the Old Elk Distillery makes Old Elk Bourbon, which is a four grain bourbon. So a guy named Greg Metz, who used to be the master distiller at MGP down in Indiana, left them maybe six years ago or so, and he is making this stuff now. And so the four grain bourbon has a real high barley content. So this is essentially the same mash that then they just distill to a higher proof and turn into a gin. So is that traditional, what traditional grains are used? Wheat? In the UK, it's usually going to be wheat, in America, corn. I mean, when you're making a neutral spirit, the whole point of a neutral spirit is that it's distilled to neutrality. It's distilled past the point where you taste the grain. Yeah, but we're nerds. Yeah. So the actual answer is whatever is cheapest because it's being distilled to neutrality. So usually these days, that means corn. Hillary, there are 10 different botanicals in this guy, similar to what Boone County was using, but they're using lime, black pepper, ginger, and French vervein, and a sage that's specifically grown in Fort Collins, Colorado. Like a wild sage? Yeah, it is a bit sweeter. It's got, I like that the ginger is definitely there. Barb hates it. I don't care for it. Well, we don't care for you. Right off the bat. Shannon saw my face right off the bat. For me, it's that really Christmas tree. I mean, like I get it and I get it why if you enjoy gin, you would like this like pungent style. But for me, this is why I don't care for the spirit. I think it's really crisp and clean. I get a nice bright orange slice from it. Yeah, you get the citrus. Yeah, that citrus is awesome. I like it. It kind of cuts the more savory botanicals. But it makes a punchy cocktail. Yeah, what would you blend this with? I mean, this makes an excellent gin martini. I mean, right straight up gin martini. I love it. And this is, what's the proof on this? 92. Oh, great. Dry, dry or what's the opposite of dry? Dirty. Dirty. I like it dry. I mean, I like my vodka martinis dirty, but my gin martinis. Dirty martinis are for useless baby boomers. But you get the blue cheese olives. I like dirty martinis. I don't like blue cheese olives. Really? What's wrong with you people? We're all over the map on this one. Yeah. It's nice that we actually disagree sometimes. Gin boggles my mind when it comes to how long it takes them to figure out their recipe, because there's so many botanicals and you can have so many different versions. It took them 75 recipes before settling on this one. Wow. Yeah. The recipes are closely guarded secrets, of course. It's like a Vermouth or a Marlmaker. It's like the Coca-Cola recipe. They'll disclose like six botanicals and there might be 17 or something. Colonel's Secret Recipe. Then in terms of the blend, like what's in the basket, is that really closely like some kind of ledger, right? Is it like baking or it has to be really specific? Yeah, of course. But it varies on the quality of the botanical. You might get a batch of dried orange peel that just on sensory alone, you might say, wow, this smells sweeter than what we normally get. So do we compensate in this way? Do you add more of a more spice forward botanical to balance out that added sweetness from this batch of orange peel? But in the grand scheme of things though, ideally you're making enough batches that all get kind of blended together. What is French vervene? I didn't look that up. I, what is that? You don't know? I hate the French. All I know. Cool. Verbena. It's a perennial herb native to Europe. Its lobed leaves are toothed. And the delicate spikes are clusters of tulip mob flowers. That sounds odd. What's the next gin, Shannon? Well, what do you have there, Shannon? The next gin that I have is the Copper & Kings, also 92 proof non-chilled filtered. Love these guys. Gin, yeah, they're great out of Butchertown. He's a cool cat. Yeah. This is another distillery that we visited when we were in Kentucky. Absolutely beautiful stills. They are distilling this particular one with 100 percent apple wine, so it's non-neutral spirit that they're using. Yeah, so they're a brandy-based company or distillery, and it's just absolutely beautiful out there. I recommend this. Do you know, is this their own brandy? Because they were buying a lot of sourced brandy too. Oh, I can't imagine. The apple brandy, I believe they're making in-house. Cool. Bart, this is where we did yoga. I do believe on the rooftop. Yep. We did yoga. This is distilled in the Alembic. Am I saying that right? Alembic stills? Yeah, Alembic still is a style of kind of old world still. This is a very reserved gin though. This isn't like leaping out of the glass like that last dry town was. No, not at all. I'm trying to figure out if you hadn't mentioned that it is a brandy base, if I wouldn't have picked it up, but I pick it up. I would have assumed that just the fruity quality from one of the chemicals. So the apples come from Michigan, and then the wine that they're using comes from South Africa. Wow, this is really spicy on the finish. Wow, we all smelled it and went, now it's reserved, but it's so flamboyant on the finish. Looked at each other and we were all like, whoa, what is that? It just jumps out of my mouth. Now, what do you do with this? Now, they pride themselves on being transparent and flavor-focused and stuff. So I really doubt this was distilled to neutrality before it became a gin either. So that's part of the reason you're picking up on that brandy base. So what do you do with this one, Shannon? There's a cocktail that I make. It's got orange peel. I use a little grapefruit juice, juniper berries. It's basically like a traditional gin and tonic. So a nice fever tree, which is put in a bunch of beautiful garnishes in it. That's cool. We had it at the distillery, so I've just been going back and forth to it. There's a picture on my Instagram. Good summer sipper. Yeah, for certain. And out on that port on the back balcony. Oh, my God. So for you guys that drink gin, the regular, what makes one gin a good martini base and one better for cocktails? Is it the spiciness that you wouldn't want to highlight? Actually, we were just talking about the gin, and you should use the example, Mike. So, for instance, for me, for a nice cocktail, like if I'm doing a gin martini, I want something that's going to be nice and dry. I like to use an old Tom gin that's going to be like oilier, sweeter, more viscous. I would probably put that in more of like a Negroni or to kind of with the herbaliness balance that out that way. It's just kind of about the balance of flavors versus letting it shine by itself. Yes. Cool. Got it. The old Tom style goes really good with citrus because you got that like fat quality and then you got the zip quality on top of it. Yeah. Old Tom is probably like my, the one that I would go to like at the very end. I appreciate these slow gins a little bit more. That was delicious berries. Slow berries. But yeah, this makes an impact. Slow berries. Slow berries. Little berries. Oh, I forgot my accent. They're just little berries. How many little berries does it take to make a gin? You three are not invited back. Wait till the wrong one. So, just a little fun fact about gin. Have you guys ever heard of Hogarth's Etching? It's not a Harry Potter thing? What the hell is that? It's Hogarth's Etching. It is a wonderful picture that depicts women and children and... Gin Lane, you're referencing here. Yes, yes, yes. So, it was an etching that was drawn to encourage people to drink beer over gin because beer is healthier at that point in time. But yeah, it's a pretty cool thing to look up. Nice to just people drunk everywhere, drunk babies. Yeah, so it's a famous painting. It's called Gin Lane. It was used to promote beer, but also it was kind of a tea-totaling thing. So, it was... Oh, I remember this. It's an etching, a painting that shows people just all drunk, collapsed on the street in some poor neighborhood in London. Sounds like for a holiday party. There's a drunk mother dropping her baby off a flight of stairs on it and stuff. So, this is 1751. Is this in the public domain? Because it could be our podcast art for this episode. It probably is. And you bring this up because... Oh, I just... It's a fun, fun, fun, fun fact. It's a fun thing to talk about, about how it ruined lives in the 1700s in London. Not a lot of regulations going on back there. Okay, I really like this. So, all the way from Evanston, Illinois, Few Spirits, and not just their gin, but their barrel-aged gin. Barrel-aged gin. So, Shannon, explain to me barrel-aged gin, because I thought it was all about, like, it's light, it's refreshing, gin is very fresh, it's all about the aromatic, so when we put it in barrel, what happens? In it? Well, it gives it some wonderful bourbon influence, so you add a little bit more spice, a little bit more sweetness. For me, this makes an excellent Negroni. I've been toying with a summer Manhattan, like our summer in Manhattan cocktail. I don't have the ingredients quite right, but I want to try to do something like that. But yeah, it's a beautiful gin, like you said, from Evanston. This guy is going to be nice, kind of smoky quality to it as well, but it's good for mixing cocktails, good for sipping on its own. What's the ABV on them? This guy is 46.5, so 93 proof. I think this has the same fingerprint as Fuse, Rye and Bourbon. They do the small barrels, they do it in a shorter amount of time, and you get kind of an aged quality, but it still has a vibrancy and freshness. And I like their Bourbon and their Rye, but I think it makes a lot more sense in the gin. Yeah. Barrel-aged gin kind of harkens back to the Geneva tradition, and the Dutch-style gin, Geneva. There was always an Oud and a Jong, an Old and a Young, and Old, of course, being barrel-aged. So Ginevers are made from a mash that has a higher percentage of malted barley in it, so they tend to be a little sweeter, a little fuller and rounder on the palate. Important distinction with barrel-aged gin there, too, especially with the Few, is this is not just Few American gin. It's not the standard Few gin put in a barrel. Gins are not usually meant to be barrel-aged. So the good barrel-aged gins, the distiller takes an approach to essentially build a new gin, specifically designed to work with the flavors imparted from a barrel, which is what Few did with this. Talk about doing 75 batches. You have to wait for them to come out of the barrel to do it. Why would a distiller want to make gin? Because it's fun or? It doesn't require aging and it provides cash flow. Like if we opened Hillary and Pat's distillery tomorrow, we obviously wouldn't have whiskey to sell for probably, if we're making good whiskey, at least probably four years. So in order to keep money flowing in that meantime, you make white goods, you make vodka and gin. It's more interesting than vodka. But also I think there's something to be said of, you have so much opportunity for expression here. Yeah, exactly, I mean, you have all these different colors in which to paint your masterpiece with gin. Shannon, I think you're on to something. I think gin's making a comeback. I think so. At least in Wicker Park. Genesence. Genesence. You guys get like a buttery quality on this one? Yeah, totally. I like this a lot. I mean, from a wine and bourbon aficionado standpoint, like it's more interesting to me than the others we've had. I do agree that it's a little fuller bodied, like richer. And I just like kind of the way it carries on on the finish. It shows to me a lot more, yeah, like a rye maybe. If you tasted this blind, do you think that you would know that it was a gin? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But do you think you would know it was barrel-aged? If you tasted it truly blind with no sight, then maybe you wouldn't know. I'd maybe think it was a Geneva or something like that, or maybe even an Old Tom. Old Tom tend to be a little sweeter than this. Or a really citrusy one with a lot of lemon peel that is like rounded and fruity. It doesn't taste like vanilla. No, no. Very cool. That's an awesome gin, and that's again one of the few barrel-age gins that are actually purposely built to be barrel-aged. Pun intended. And that one's $32.99? That's not bad. All right, are we moving on to the next one? Yeah, what else we got for us, Shannon? I have a Sipsmith London Sloe Gin. It is red in color. Is this category coming back? Not really. I sold it in college, right? And the people who drank it were like the guys who wanted to be tough and not admit that they were drinking a fruity liqueur. Yeah, so, Sloe Gin, not actually a gin, it is a gin-based liqueur made with sloe berries, which are, man, we wish the Fruit King was here because he'd be all over exactly what a sloe berry is. The Fruit King? Yeah, I know. So, it's called a Blackthorn or Sloe Pernus Sipinosa. It's from the Rose family. Yeah, it's a- Spoken with a tone of authority of one who is not reading Wikipedia right now. It tastes like honey. Does it? I got to say- Yeah, you pass it around, come on. I got to say, just visually, it's a really stunning package of labels pretty. It's $39.99. That looks cool. 30 percent alcohol. It says on the label Autumn Harvest. Is that actually a thing? It says Special Edition 2016 Autumn Harvest. In London. Is that a real thing or is that just their proprietary name? My guess is they make it once a year when the slows are harvested, and so they're going to have some vintage variation maybe. I enjoy making popsicles. Oh boy. Oh yeah. Whoa, give us a recipe. So you do about two and a half ounces of the slow gin with a little bit of squirt. So you get that little grapefruit citrusiness, and then I just throw a bunch of random whatever fruit I have in my house and then my little popsicle machines and I- Alcopop. That's great. Shannon's gin pops. They are amazing. And then follow up, if you show up randomly at Shannon's house at any time, no, she's not sober. It's kind of a nice thing living out in the city and being able to go to and fro. With your gin pop. With my gin pop. I think I read something like Sipsmith is the only distillery in London. It was the first distillery to open in London in a long time. 2009, yeah, 2009. The last one was 1820. It was originally in Hammersmith, London, but I believe they recently relocated their facilities. They have three different stills. They have different names for their stills. So one is called Prudence. That was the first one. They had to take time to make their products. That's why it's called Prudence. And then there was called Patience for macerating. And the last one is called Constance. That one is one they do all of their London Dry only on. There's some pretty cool guys. They make some really good gin. You know, it used to be more expensive too. Like when we first got Sipsmith, I want to say it was like a $50 gin or something ridiculous like that. But now it's it's approachable price wise, and it's in most Binny's locations. So besides the specialty Shannon ginsicle, what else do I do with this? What kind of cocktail can I make? Is it summertime? Is it winter? Is it all time? Slow gin fizz, of course. Well, I remember that from when I was 19. But otherwise, what else can I do? I think it's both summer and wintertime. They have something on there called a Bramble. We're using the Sipsmith, some sugar syrup, simple syrup, fresh lemon and blackberry. So I think that would be one that could be used for both summer and winter. Put it in your Prosecco. Yeah, Prosecco, like, a Spritzer. floater or something. But I don't know. I think, like, just tasting it by itself. I do remember the cheap, thick purple stuff in baby cocktails when I was a teenager. Yeah, not the same. Above the age, I mean. The Dubuchet Sloe Gin that costs like $11. No. This is definitely not that. It's great. It's like a cross between, like, somehow wonderfully honeyed, Kool-Aid, and, like, cough syrup, but in a really great way that, like, finishes a little bit bitter. I can see it, like, in something, yeah, elegant, but I can also see it with, like, a fizzy French lemonade or something. Yeah. Yeah, this would be awesome in lemonade. Did you say French 75? I didn't say that, but... But in the champagne, like a, like a cure. Yeah, in, yeah, in some champagne. Yeah, so it has, like, an extra herbal quality, too. Pretty cool. That's delicious. There's a new limited edition from Hendrick's Gin coming out this summer, called Midsummer Solstice, and it's going to be around probably from about May to August. And then it's going to be gone, but it is meant to be a more delicate kind of floral take on Hendrick's. I have not tried to get, but we have a sample bottle here, so we all get to preview it. Neat. Cool. So some other really good cocktails, Aviation Cocktail, Gin, Crumb de Violette, some Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur, and Delicious Citrus. It's one of my favorites. You put a little cherry in the bottom. It's just beautiful. You ever do this? Okay, so you take like an old Tom Gin, something like that, and then like Elderflower Liqueur, and then Habanero Bitters. So it has heat on top of the herbal quality from the gin and the sweetness from it. No, I've never done that. I do that with my margaritas, with the ancho-reyes. Yeah. I don't know where I picked that up, but that became like one of my cocktails to go to for a while. All right. Like an extra dimension. Cool. So when are you mixing us this cocktail? When I buy another thing of Habanero Bitters from Bitterman's. Cool. Do we even carry them anymore? We do. They're not everywhere, but they can be ordered anywhere. I don't have Habanero, but I think I might have a Spicy Bitters. Okay. So this is the Special Limited Edition Hendricks. It's so fun. Is it? Yeah. It's fresh. Talk about fruity pebbles. Yeah. Is there possibly chamomile? Celebration of eternal hope. I think you're spot on, chamomile. According to the label, this is blissful with tonic over ice and a slice of cucumber. I'm looking for bliss. Me too. Maybe add this to Shannon's pop. It also blossoms in an altogether different dimension when served with sparkling wine and a splash of tonic for the ultimate midsummer solstice spritz. Pat, where is Hendrick's distilled? Hendrick's is distilled at the Gervan Distillery on the west coast of Scotland. It's a gigantic distillery, biggest distillery I've ever seen. Roughly 10% of all whiskey aging in the country of Scotland is at this one giant distillery. Is this one where they have their gin distillery is like a separate operation, but it's in the area? Yeah, so the Gervan Distillery itself is a huge, it's like a 900 acre campus or something. So they have this huge grain distillery. The biggest still I've ever seen, it is 90 meters tall, 25 meter diameter on a column still. It's just gigantic. It's outside. You pass it and you think it was some kind of like industrial oil thing or something. The Hendrick's distillery is there, which is this beautiful, it's like a Willy Wonka distillery. It's done to the nines. It's meant to be visited. You look at the Hendrick's packaging with this Victorian area extravagance to it, and the distillery looks the same way. There's huge, gorgeous copper pot stills. It's really cool. Last question from me for you guys is, we've talked a lot about the origin of the grains as well as the distilleries, but it doesn't seem to me that gin reflects anything of terroir. Is that true or are there gins that taste like from where they came? It's funny. I was in a debate with Pontani recently about terroir and spirits and whether it's there, and I had a couple of people arguing it wasn't. When you're dealing with gin, considering your base product is 99.9% of the time in neutral spirit, I would argue you don't have terroir in that. And, you know, maybe in an aged gin, you might pick up some character from the place it was aged, but the botanicals themselves, do they have terroir? I mean, according to St. George, they do. Yeah, well, they make a gin specifically to highlight terroir of an area. Yeah, because they specifically make a package, like three, right? Two or three, that they have, like they want to create the herbal flavor of the area. They have one called terroir gin, and it is all botanicals foraged from the local area in Northern California. I would call that more that the gin has, I guess terroir is a sense of place, but terroir in the wine sense where like you can take the same grape grown in two different places and have a big difference, but I mean there's so many other factors too in that. And even in wine, you know, fermentation and all that too. I think that terroir gets thrown around a little liberally sometimes. Could you force terroir into gin? Yes, you could force it into the same stuff. You could force character in, whether it's like legitimately passed on from the place that it came. I can't completely get behind this Hendrick's gin. That tastes like bubblegum, like grape bubblegum, like I just opened a big pack of my child's. Bazooka, bubblegum? The big chew with the baseball players on it. Shannon, what's your all-time favorite gin or gin cocktail? For me, it's an aviation. That was what got me into gin cocktails, but the gin that brought me into gin to begin with was the botanist from Brutalotic. I love whiskey, I love scotch, and I thought it was really neat that there was a gin from Scotland. That is neat. Who knew? Distilled on the Ugly Betty. That was my gateway gin. Now I've explored a bunch of other ones. Right now, I've been drinking a lot of the Copper & Kings and the Dry Town. Outstanding. Any other pins to put on the gin conversation? Well, I mean, it's a broad subject, and there's a lot of different styles of gin. Yeah, I like, I like, you know, it's trying, trying different stuff is, you know, if you're into gin, you can always find, I think, a different use for gin. Like gin tends to get pigeonholed into gin and tonic or Negroni or maybe an aviation or something. But there is there is a lot of different uses for gin. And you just got to be willing to kind of play with it and explore it. Shannon, you're going to be in the hot seat now because it's time for the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where listeners write their questions to us at comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, sometimes in person. We got this question in person from Tom Seewald at the Expo, and I could tell he thought he was going to pull one over on us. It's a trying to stump us question. And that's why it's going straight at Shannon. Oh, no. Tom's question is, can you name all of the Islay Distilleries and pronounce them correctly without cheating? All of the Islay Distilleries. Give her a hint. Tell her how many there are. There are eight. Okay. Well, now nine. They don't have any whiskey in the market yet, so we'll say eight. So, Lagamulin? Yes. Ardbeg? Yes. Coelho? Yes. Well, I just said one of them. Oh, God. I'm looking at my shelf. I'm looking at my whiskey collection. Kilholman? That's the second newest one. Boonehaven? Yes. Get it, Shannon. Come on. Boonehaven. You got this. Is Beaum? No. Oba? Oba? No. Beaumor? No. So close though. Ocantote? No. You were in the classic malts. You were missing a classic malt, right? No, she's not. She said leg of a one? She said leg of a one. You're missing another L, and one you named but said no was actually one. What did I just say? The Oban? No, no, no, no, the Beaumor. Beaumor, yes. Beaumor, okay. I have one more. What's the new one? The new one is Ardnajo, but you are missing one, a big one. The one that starts with an L? Oh, God. Where is it in my- Give her a hint, cheese, Pat. It's down the street from Lagavulin and Ardbeg. LaFrogue? Yep. I thought I said LaFrogue. How did I not say LaFrogue? I thought I said LaFrogue. All right, do them again. Say them again, Pat. Kilhoman, Brook Laddie, Beaumor, Lagavulin, LaFrogue, Ardbeg, Coleela, Boonehaven, Ardnajo. There's nine. The guy who owns the Port of Skagg brand is supposedly building a tenth. Tom, go ahead and go back in our timeline. We have a two-part Isla podcast where we taste a couple of examples from every single distillery on Isla. I feel like since Tom tried to stump us and didn't, he does not earn a gift. He owes us 20 bucks? He should not get a gift card but buy us. Pay up, Tom. Tom will send you a gift card but you got to buy us a Guinness next time you see us out on the bottle. Thanks for coming to the Wine Expo, Tom. Yeah, totally. Asking a question about Scotch. Whatever. You can tell the guys who get dragged to the Wine Expo. The Wine Expo was open for three minutes and two guys walked up to our table and asked us where the beer was. Thanks, Tom. Everybody else can write your questions and comments at binnys.com via email. Hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Tumblr. That's not a thing. Hillary's shaking her head no. On TikTok. Shannon, thanks for coming in today. Thanks for having me. Sharing your passion on gin. It's infectious. Appreciate it. Gin pops. Heck yeah. Come on over. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We will be back soon with more great tastes. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Barb. I'm Hillary. I'm Pat. I'm Shannon. Keep tasting. Wait till the rum one. Wait, is that Talk Like a Pirate Day? That's after this. You should. Yeah, we're not going to do it today. We're going to do it next time. You should do it. I talked like a pirate day. I think we could have Rajan on the rum one. I looked up pirate jokes. You're going to have to do it again. That's all right. She's been in there reading pirate jokes while we were tasting Spanish wine. That's why you wouldn't sit on the wine one. It's kind of like a rum joke. All right. Shannon, are you going to give us the next joke? Yes, I am.