I have been working with gin for many years, doing gin tastings and seminars and have been an accredited gin judge at international spirits competitions for four years. And after trying many hundreds of gins I found that the spectrum was pretty narrow (stereotype), although lately we've seen a lot of good new products with new and exciting botanicals. As such, I felt that creating a gin that would push the boundaries of the London gin label to the limit could be a challenge.
I've thought about geranium for a long time (the smell of the leaves is almost like a gin and tonic itself) and geranium has been used for centuries for medicinal purposes (for depression, fatigue and more) and by cooks for purification air in the kitchen and for seasoning dishes. So the history and uses were very similar to juniper and when we did the chemical analysis we found that the essential oils in geranium (geraniol, geraniol formate, linalol, rose oxide, citronelol) are present in most fruits, vegetables and spices were. and vice versa, along with the main components of gin (juniper, lemon, coriander, angelica), geranium is used in the therapeutic world. So, in theory, geranium paired well with gin and a variety of mixers that bartenders use today to create new and exciting cocktails.
The challenge now was to get the oils out of the geranium by distillation in alcohol (usually the oils are extracted by steam/vapor pressure) to end up with a London Gin. Luckily my father was a chemist who had worked with essential oils for the perfume and food industries for decades and we bought a 5 liter copper still and we set up a mini lab in his house and started experimenting with the plants. After a few weeks we figured out how to process, mature and distil the geranium to get the oils we needed.
My goal was to make an authentic London Dry Gin, so of course our gin should be made in England where the tradition, knowledge and equipment was there, so we spent some time with our English distiller and made the final recipe. And the recipe we made results in a gin that offers a different taste and flavor depending on the blender used, due to the abilities of the previously mentioned oils. (Kristian Kamp, the only Dane with a recipe in Gary Regan's Gin Compendium, calls it a chameleon).
