Newly Discovered GIN

Today at Fred Meyer there was a close out on ISIS Gin ($29.99 sale price). I considered it a politically correct move on the part of the store, so I thought I would purchase a bottle for conversation purposes and to help the store out. It is locally produced in Snohomish, WA so I felt good about helping out the home state business. Immediately upon opening it I knew this was going to be different. The floral notes came across in the bouquet, without the piney familiarity of juniper. It was a mind-blower flavor with the addition of lavender giving it that heady floral fragrance, plus some other botanicals that work well together. It tastes like a smooth vodka blended beverage. Not sure they should call it gin. But, I really like it! Anybody familiar with it?

[Jenise]

What an unfortunate choice of names. After reading your description, I wondered if it was the same product I recall tasting a year or so ago--the floral/not juniper part resonated--and indeed it is. They also make an ISIS vodka (and yes they do spell it with all capital letters), so deals on that one are bound to be forthcoming as well, and a number of other products--a rum, various liqueurs, a nocino, etc.

http://skiprockdistillers.com/products/mac-donald-distillery/isis-gin/

That's one I haven't seen around here. Definitely poor timing on the name. I wonder if they're in the process of changing it?
'

Haven't had that particular one.

If it is a close-out at $30, that is indicative of one of the problems with craft distillers. It's hard to be a micro-distiller. It is expensive to do small batch distillation. Too much money in and not enough coming back quickly..if at all. Startup costs are incredible; operating costs on such a small scale are imposing as well.

And in the gin market these days, there are price points all over the place, from the cheap to the ridiculously high.

Add to that (although it doesn't seem to be the case here from the fulsome praise given) the uneven quality of craft distillers. I recently did a judging for a distillers festival wherein we blind tasted more than 30 craft gins. About 50% were downright awful. And of the 30+ I found exactly two that were interesting enough to follow up on. My fellow judges felt the same way.

Thing is vodka and gin are the first things (along with rum---you know, the white spirits) that craft distillers can do to generate cash flow and ROI. But making those spirits are harder than you think. Because nowhere to hide. And few young craft distillers are sophisticated enough, or experienced enough, to do great distillations right from the start.

Yeah, just offhand, gin seems like one of the easier ones to make, but I remember one of the guys at the distiller's festival we went to in Portland saying he'd done something like 30 or 40 trials to get his mix of botanicals where he wanted it. (I can't remember the name of that gin now, but it was excellent.)

I didn't realize the failure rate was that high, though.

I didn't realize the failure rate was that high, though.

Well, remember, any given Sunday.

Some of the gins we tasted blind were actually successful---in that they were being sold and had gotten some decent reviews and accolades. We were tasting them straight, at room temperature, and alone. And quite a few of them.

Yes, it disconcerted all the judges (some professionals with international credentials and knowledge, some local distillers, some bartenders) that there were so many poor gins (and even worse, poorly made gins).

The worst, I found out subsequently, were 'one off' experiments, distillers playing around with a single batch of something wild (and as often as not, based on what I tasted, things strange and ugly)----and then bottling that batch for sale in their tasting room when it was evident it wasn't going to go any further. You just don't do that if you value your reputation and your desired brand equity!

Keep in mind also that it is not at all unusual for a distiller to submit a spirit specifically to get feedback to see if it has legs. Many of these, sadly, were entirely without support and belonged in the thalidomide category. Uck. Just because it is a botanical doesn't mean you should distill it into gin.