Leopold's American Small Batch GIN
Tasting Note
Hand bottled, hand labelled, and hand numbered, Leopold’s American Small Batch Gin has been distilled since 2002.
Most gin is produced by placing spirit in a pot still and adding the entire range of botanicals in the still before distilling the entire steep in one run. Not all botanicals (juniper, coriander, etc.) have the same boiling point, so when a distiller distils all the botanicals together, searching for the best juniper flavour, for example, he/she is over boiling the coriander.
When botanicals are over boiled, tannin-like flavours are extracted, drying out the final Gin. With Leopold's, they take a different tack by placing each individual botanical in the still and distil them off separately. They carefully make cuts like you would for a whiskey: heads, hearts, and tails. The heart portion is when, as an example, the fruity-floral nose of the juniper is at its cleanest. After the heart has been collected, the refined juniper nose gets muddled and cloying, smelling and tasting a bit like pine trees. They discard this portion, favouring the cleaner hearts portion, and this gives their spirit its rounded, clean finish that is unlike any other gin in the world.
They apply this method for the rest of our botanicals: Orris Root, Cardamon, Coriander, and hand-zested Valencia Oranges and Pummelos, carefully extracting the best aromas that these botanicals have to offer. The result is a softer, brighter, and more approachable spirit.
