This informative little book is actually titled 101 Gins: To Try Before You Die and I bet Ian Buxton had fun researching it!

I certainly enjoyed reading it! You may know Ian from such titles as ‘101 Whiskys’ and his writing style if you haven’t heard of him before, is informative and interesting – certain sections made me giggle.

The book starts with a brief introduction, some history about gin and details on how it’s made. If you are a regular reader of my blog you’ll know all about this already from many similar lessons at each gin tasting!

Then Ian gets on with listing his top 101 gins to try before you die….

I went through and checked – I’ve got 64 out of the 101 ticked off – now it seems like a much more manageable list (but I am a gin lush….)

As all good gin drinkers should, Ian includes the classics – Tanqueray, Beefeater, Bombay Sapphire, but he also includes some of the newest craft gins to be launched – starting with number one:

58 gin is one of the newest gins to come out of East London. Mark Marmont was absolutely delighted to hold prime position in the book and I have to admit, despite stalking following him on Twitter and Instgram I’ve yet to try it – it’s on the list Mark!! (See edit above – I’ve now ticked 58 gin off the list 🙌😀)

What I found amusing was Ian’s inclusion of a couple of gins that according to him aren’t gin at all! Ian writes a particularly scathing review of Hoxton Gin with its big hits of grapefruit and coconut and not much of the traditional juniper on the flavour profile at all…. (technically to be called a gin in the EU it needs a minimum of 45% juniper in the ingredients it’s distilled with – but that doesn’t mean that juniper needs to be the dominant flavour of the finished product….)

Now this is one where I agree its not the classic gin taste, but its a good introduction to a new spirit, a little like drinking sweet drinks like Malibu when you’re under aged… (I’ve never done that though! I’m too classy for Malibu!) and obviously would be good in cocktails for a different taste.

So why does Ian include it then? Well I pondered this and thought that to have a well rounded selection, you are not personally going to like every one of the 101 – for example I’m not keen on aged gin that reminds me of whisky, but for completeness it’s good to have a variety of styles included in the list. I commend Ian for his dedication!

New style gins

I have one more gin I want to highlight here – as you can see I’ve already annotated my copy with stars where I’ve tried a gin and also hearts where I love them.

My favourite gin at the moment is St George Terroir, another ‘gin’ that doesn’t taste like a traditional gin. I first tried it at Junipalooza festival and the hit of pine and herby sage had me converted instantly. I love the savoury dry flavours and I completely agree with Ian that I’m also ‘pining for it now’ (good pun-age!)

I don’t want to spoil the rest, so you’ll just have to buy it to see what the other gins are – the book is available on Amazon as both a kindle edition and a hardback – I would recommend the hardback as a present for any gin lovers in your life, or even those you are trying to convert!

The girls thought that 58 Gin had a bit of a liquorice flavour, which is weird as it’s not one of the listed botanicals, but has previously been used to sweeten gin – for example in an Old Tom style.