Not By The Hair Of My Ginny Gin Gin

Recently I found myself to be the unexpected recipient of a large bottle of gin.

It would be nice if distilleries started sending me free stuff to [ahem] review.  But this bottle came from my lifelong friend ADS at the close of the S&J wedding weekend.  Suffice it to say, he thought we would need a lot more booze to make it through the night at this miserable motel in New Hampshire.

We had not counted on the after party.  And thus the emergency supply of hooch ADS procured went largely untouched.  Since the TSA would not let him bring it back on the plane, it came home with me.

Generally, I enjoy the classics.  And my gin of choice is the traditional Tanqueray.  The new gin in my life is its sprightly younger cousin, Tanqueray Rangpur.

If you really want to learn about what a Rangpur is, and how the gin fits into the product line, you can go to the distillery’s official site.  I am sure they would love to tell you all about it.

What I’ll tell you is that this gin is light and limey.

And that is not entirely a bad thing.  Especially for those people who may need some coaxing to warm up to gin.  I have said before that I am very interested in trying to get more people to accept gin as a better alternative in cocktails to vodka.

This would certainly be a good choice as a starter gin.

That said, with its pronounced citrus components it feels very much like a summer spirit.  So if you are going to get some, the time is now, before fall really starts to take a grip on the Northeast.

In our motel in New Hampshire, the Rangpur went beautifully with bitter lemon soda and a squeeze of lime.  It also made dynamite gin and tonics, again with a modest squeeze of lime.

This was not my first encounter with this gin.  Perhaps the best thing I put in my mouth at Creo was their Rangpur Rickey.  It was on their signature cocktail list, and is simply this gin, fresh lime and seltzer.  But it is always surprising to see a signature cocktail that isn’t some sweet confection.  When I passed the drink around to some of the ladies in my moms group (yes, I’m in a moms group) they all loved it too.

And thinking about the moms, I would bet real money that if you replaced the vodka in a cosmo with Rangpur, you would have an improved cocktail.

One thing that I did notice about the gin as I have been playing around with it a bit at home is that it goes much better with the Angostura orange bitters than it does with the Fee Brother’s orange bitters.  The gin is light, and has these high notes of citrus.  The Angostura orange also has high citrus notes that do not work well in everything (for example they clash against the coffee notes in the Afro-Cuban cocktail – Fee’s orange are a better match) but they do complement the Rangpur nicely.

I would still advise against making Martinis with the Rangpur, especially if you are one of those people who insist on garnishing the drink with the already inadvisable olives.  Look, I love olives too.  But maybe you can just order a dish to snack on while you drink your crisp Martini and keep your food on the table, and out of your glass, like a civilized person.

Some things do not benefit from garnish.  Or innovation.