Gin Twenty-One

Description

The world’s first crowdsourced botanical gin.

The story of this gin is also the story of how Last Straw’s co-founder and President, Don Dimonte’s youngest son, Brandon, became our distiller. While Don and Mike were hell-bent on making whiskies and other barrel-aged spirits, Brandon wanted us to

make a gin. Since nobody else wanted to do it, we bought a 3-litre home-scale hobby still for him to tinker with, and pretty much forgot about it. Brandon toiled for months, first using the still to make enough base spirit with a simple sugar-shine, and then to find the right balance of citrus, juniper, and aromatics. He created test recipes A-Z, then started into the numbers.

When he had a few batches he liked, we invited the public to visit the distillery, taste his 7 favourites, and vote on which one should be our production gin. We put on three nights of tasting and voting. Just after the guests had left from the first night of tasting, Brandon showed up with another batch – test batch #21. We tasted it, liked it, and added it to the roster for the next two nights’ tastings.

The result was a landslide. This gin, his 21st numbered recipe, was the people’s choice.

“This is a very dry gin, yet I found sipping pleasant, especially as the Citrus elements (in particular grapefruit zest and hints of lemon) seemed to shine just a bit brighter on the palate than they did in the breezes. A light spiciness of coriander seems to build up just a little with each sip, and I cannot shake the impression that a little celery-like flavour (perhaps cilantro) is present as well.”

It was a gold medal winner at the 2018 Canadian Artisanal Spirits Competition and won a bronze medal at the 2019 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

But perhaps the best review of all is from non-gin drinkers who tell us that Gin Twenty-One is the first gin they don’t automatically want to spit out. Serious gin drinkers will drink it on the rocks, with a little sprig of rosemary.

Being 46%, the flavours are quite concentrated, so it stands up extremely well in a flavourful cocktail. If you’ve got some mixing skills, try the citrussy Gentleman Farmer.

For something a little simpler, but equally refreshing, perhaps we can interest you in a Gin-Ger Tea?