Allure of a new gin-eration

Gin should intrigue. Think about it. Its base may only be vodka, but the finished product has been taken on a tour of the wide and scented world of plants, roots, seeds and peels. These plant materials come from exotic locations like Zanzibar, Java, Vietnam and Morocco; they fall from the sky; they're scraped off trees; they're plucked from bushes; they're dug out of the earth. Vodka sells on little other than the florid imaginations of advertising copywriters; gin has all the richness of the natural world to call on. Or should.

Its lustre, I agree, has become rather dull and dowdy of late, which is largely the fault of market leader Gordon's. Not only did Gordon's cheapen its image by reducing its strength from a noble 40 per cent to a humiliating 37.5 per cent, but it also shows no interest in communicating anything about ingredients and distillation methods. Instead, the back label drones on about the brand's tedious " innervigoration" campaign, and informs purchasers how to make a gin and tonic. Have you ever met anyone intellectually defeated by the challenge of making a gin and tonic? Me neither.

Unsurprisingly, others have seen what a dusty job Gordon's is doing with the London gin tradition and stepped into the breach. The peppery Beefeater held its strength at 40 per cent, improved its packaging, and describes four of its main ingredients on the label (juniper, coriander, angelica and Seville orange peel). The revitalised Plymouth Gin is a little more cagey about its botanicals, though it admits there are seven of them, and admits, too, that the emphasis is on roots.

In terms of communicative frankness as well as exotic allure, Bombay Sapphire ( distilled by Greenalls, but owned by Bacardi) is hard to beat. Its 10 botanicals are engraved onto the pale-blue bottle and drawn onto the back label. This is another gin in which juniper takes the back seat. Sniff the neat spirit and you might almost think you had your nose in a perfume bottle. Its spice-island muskiness, moist liquorice and billowing sweet citrus make it the most flamboyant gin of all.

Now there is a new generation of contenders - including one from Croydon. In truth, the "London" reference on a gin bottle is geographically meaningless: you can make a London gin anywhere in the world, just as you can make a Cheddar cheese anywhere in the world. (Not so Plymouth gin, which has to be made in Plymouth using water from Dartmoor.) Within the EU, however, using the term "London" on a gin bottle has a quality implication: it means that the spirit has to be distilled with its botanicals, rather than merely mixed with essences ("cold-compounded", in gin's makers' jargon).

The London Gin Company is the Croydon-based operation; it is headed by an ex-tea man called Martin Gill. He has the spirit distilled in Lichfield by Manor Distilleries, and it contains no fewer than 12 botanicals, including one unique ingredient. He reasoned that it was no accident that Earl Grey was such a popular tea, and puts the Earl Grey flavour bergamot into the gin, although I found it hard to pick out. For this article, I pitched the new London Gin Company Special Dry gin against five leading competitors (Gordon's, Beefeater, Plymouth, Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire) in a blind tasting. One taster put it first and the other two put it third. It's got a fair hit of juniper over a solidly rooty, lemony base. You can buy it in two versions: one with fewer botanicals and rather dowdy packaging which larger Tesco stores offer at a bargain £12.49 per litre, and a smarter looking, more botanically concentrated version for the ontrade (as served in Langan's and the RAC Club). Both are at 40 per cent.

The last word in packaging, meanwhile, goes to Martin Miller's Reformed London Dry Gin, a 40-per-cent UKdistilled gin which sets sail for Iceland for the addition of Icelandic glacier water (plus, the producers claim, a secret ingredient) before bottling. The exquisite clear-glass bottle, like Bombay Sapphire, has the ingredients printed onto it, together with an antique map on which this bizarre maritime trajectory is marked. In terms of botanicals, Miller's seems to major on the citrus family, with no less than four sets of peels (lemon, sweet orange, Seville orange and lime) as well as juniper, orris root, cassia bark, coriander and angelica. It's a nose-teasing, perfumer's gin in the Bombay Sapphire mould; indeed its peachy, floral exoticism reminds me of the Viognier grape variety. It's aimed at bars and restaurants, although you can order it on the web for £17.51 a bottle (www. millersgin.com).

My guess is that it won't be the last of the new gin generation and that Gordon's is going to have to try a lot harder if it wants to remain anybody's favourite London gin.