Spring time for a gin fling

No time like the present to check out the best in award-winning Australian gin...it's just the tonic. Mike Gribble reports.

You don't need to read the words. You know it's gin season.

Gin is so in because it reminds us of everything the palate has learned. There's the simple pleasure of sweetness in its seam, lifted and nuanced by infused botanicals.

The tongue respects the calming tincture-like medicinal effect. It starts at the olfactories with a whiff of tonic water and its quinine-giving cinchona bark. Then comes that evermore endearing bitter citrus-hinged tang that appeases maturing tastebuds.

Dutch by origin, gin took a swerve to popularity in London in the 18th century. Landowners cashed in on ordinary grain crops, distilling the cheap drink of choice for the impoverished.

For the first time, London's women and men were allowed to hold up the bar together, their compounding haplessness hazing their memories of crying kids at home. Mother's Ruin became the moniker.

Before that, though, gin was Dutch Courage. The Thirty Years War of 1618 saw the Dutch fighting with vials of gin on their belts against the English.

But before that again, it was simply a scientist's concoction of juniper berry oil intended as a commercial tincture, but with spirit and a few botanicals added so that the ill might feel inclined to swallow the stuff. Some of the ill got better.

Some loved the medicine too much and became worse.

Today, gin's horizon is glowing with high-end ingredients melding with high purity spirit from the sweat of copper stills and tall columns. And the quality and variety has impassioned new fans.

Its engaging fairweather fume is distinguished by juniper, ubiquitous since the beginning. Its other multifarious herbs, fruits, spices and nuts in their botanicals are variously secret and often too numerous to mention.

At the top of Australia's spectrum of accolades for gin is West Winds, circa 2010, of WA.

It has been talk of the nation's bars since being awarded 2011 San Francisco International Spirits Competition Double Gold/Gold, respectively, for its bush tucker-tinged (wattle seed and bush tomato) bottles, The Cutlass ($75) and The Sabre ($60).

And among the newest gins on the Aussie market is the certified organic Antipodes ($75), a South Australian/ Victorian collaboration led by Adelaidean Shane Reid and Melburnian Rory Gration.

It's closely followed by 78Degrees Small Batch Gin ($78) from Sacha La Forgia in the Adelaide Hills. Both are building national momentum.

78Degrees is crafted with LaForgia's "column and basket" distillation and is known for its snapping London dry style, which cleverly manages a rare subtle delicacy even under the weight of ordinary tonic. It is the confluence of 12 botanicals and spice in a grape base and LaForgia recommends a lemon twist or a knock-off Negroni.

Adelaide city bars such as Proof are spruiking its integrity and hard-worked aroma and flavour characteristics by its winemaking founder.

Reid and Gration's Antipodes, after a hard slog through organic and carbon neutral certification, has a proud floral and citrus-tinged bouquet, which is enchanting, light and bright with layered complexity and a ringing porcelain sustain on the tongue. Its ingredients are inspired by the pair's Riverland upbringing and also include Tassie pepper berry. Antipodes deserves a neat, lightly chilled try before adding go-to mixers such as tonic and Angostura bitters for a pink fling.

There are so many great names for a long gin summer: Melbourne's Four Pillars and MGC, Tasmania's McHenry, SA's Applewood, Settlers by McLaren Vale Distilling Co. and O Gin from KI Spirits, Dobson's from NSW... the list is seemingly infinite.

In a surreal twist, Melbourne's Sin-ko-nah is a syrup tonic lovers can apportion in a favourite ratio to sparkling mineral water - a kind of cordial for gin.

It is made from the bark of South America's cinchona - or "quina" - the source for quinine, and blended with Aussie citrus and juniper. I

t has about a third less sugar than the supermarket premixers and a 500ml bottle ($45, 200ml $22) makes more than 6L of tonic water - a sprightly nifty spritzer for non-alcoholic quenchers.

But this is gin season so splash it.