WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

In the not-so-distant past, gins were often stored and transported in wooden casks as a matter of necessity. And these barrels weren’t necessarily new, either. The barrel storing gin today might have held a different gin yesterday and maybe a wine or whisky before that. Glass, plastic and other conveyances or fresh barrels were either prohibitively expensive, or just weren’t invented yet. When you see a gin referred to by name in a 19th-century cocktail manual, it’s likely that it spent part of its life in an old barrel.

However, here’s where an important distinction needs to be made. The barrel-aged gins of today are made with intention, compared to the barrel-aged resting out of necessity of their predecessors. Distillers and producers today are choosing