My Broker

My local purveyor stocks Broker's Gin, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  The marketing tag "World's best gin" raised my antennae so I thought I'd take the 94 proof stripe--there's no sense in buying a less-fortified bottle of prospective exaggeration...

But when I teased some ounces into my shaker and made my first martini, I realized we indeed had a superior gin on our hands!

On the key juniper-sugar axis that defines nine-tenths of the gin experience, Broker's is low both.  Its juniper is faint and its sugar is nonexistent.  It may have a dozen botanicals but none are especially noteworthy.  In short, this is very fresh, very pure gin, a kind of gin-maker's gin, in which flavor doesn't beat you over the head but nonetheless announces itself as gin, very definitely so.

So I like Broker's.  It is flavored well by whatever you flavor it with--tonic, or bitters (I like pink gins) and it's the perfect weapons-grade base for a French 75.  I haven't been as pleased by a new gin since my first Junipero.  I look forward to a lifelong relationship, in which it joins the shelf with Junipero, Beefeater, and Plymouth.  Good on ye, lads!