Tanqueray Ten

Gin
Purchase Price: $28
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 8.6

We all have a favorite. Favorite car, favorite musician, favorite episode of Saved By the Bell. (Mine's the episode where they were going to go white water rafting and then something silly happened and then a lesson was learned and everybody was happy in the end, just like always.) Gin is always hard for me to review because I usually mix it with tonic and, well, tonic can be pretty overpowering stuff. But this is my favorite and I like it so much I even had some on the rocks once, and it still did the business. The most complex, complete gin on the market with a fruity sweetness that is indeed the result of using hand-picked citrus botanicals. What a great idea! Do yourself a favor and don't confine this to the usual G & T. There's so much going on here, it just begs to be part of a dry martini. And the elegant green bottle will bring class to any liquor cabinet, especially if you've got a bottle of Old Crow lurking around in there, as I suspect you do!

South

Gin
Purchase Price: $16
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 7.9

This is sold to the general public in a towering bottle that's going to loom over its companions in your liquor cabinet like Jan Koller over everyone else on the pitch. And that's about it. New Zealand is supposedly an exotic place that has hobbits, wizards and other fantastic creatures, but they seem to have forgotten to infuse this gin with any of that 'ol Kiwi magic. It's serviceable, and that bottle is always going to come in handy in a liquor bottle sword fight, but a little bit of packaging gimmickry does not a world-beater make. Especially when it is priced considerably higher than the bargain basement introductory price I paid for this. I think it's going for $30+ in most places.

Plymouth

Gin
Purchase Price: $14
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 8.4

Plymouth is one of the world’s best gins, period. I would even go so far to say that it is my second favorite gin, just a nose behind Tanqueray Ten. Plymouth is crisp; it’s no-frills; it takes to tonic or vermouth like Yukon Cornelius does to snow. They have changed bottles recently and the price has gone up but it’s still worth every farthing. I have included the old bottle here for nostalgia’s sake. Plymouth is one of England’s oldest brands--just a bit younger than the USA itself and the spirit itself was originally distilled by Monks on the same site for many years before that. The Pilgrims of yore departed for the New World from Plymouth on a ship you may have heard of--The Mayflower, which, as you can see, had a prominent place on the label until only very recently. So sip a bit of history, won’t you?

Oliphant

Gin
Purchase Price: $15
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 7.9

Sometimes gin is a damn hard drink to review. Oliphant (Dutch for elephant—in Swahili these large animals are sometimes called “Jumbe” or “chief” which is where the name Jumbo was derived) is pleasant enough as one half of a gin and tonic, but I can’t think of much to say about it beyond this simple truth. It’s from Holland, whose national drink is a similar spirit they call Jenever, but Oliphant gin isn’t nearly as interesting as that. This distillery also makes a vodka and both it and this gin are reasonably priced and easy to drink. Just don’t expect to get trampled by any rogue “Oliphants” of taste.

Boodles

Gin
Purchase Price: $15
Place of Purchase: Chalet Premier Wines - North Lima, OH
Rating: 8.3

Boodles is as every bit as quirkily British as its name, like a Bristol Blenheim motoring up the A417 packed with a group of Morris Dancers on their way to the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling “celebration” of broken legs and irreversible head injuries. Actually, it’s a bit more elegant than that, and in fact one of my favorite gins. It embraces tonic like a long lost brother in arms and makes a Martini that’s as snappy and stiff as the brim on a bowler. What more can you ask of gin than that?

Seagram's Extra Dry

Gin
Purchase Price: $13
Place of Purchase: Struthers Beer and Wine - Struthers, OH
Rating: 8.1

I freely admit to being really snobbish about any domestic liquor that falls outside of the brown Bourbon/Tennessee Whiskey/Rye universe. When it comes to clear drinks like Gin, Vodka, and even light rums, I tend to dismiss American products as the low-grade barroom mixers most of them are, but I really like this gin! I’ve only used it to make Gin and Tonics, but in this regard it performs just fine. In short, this gin is not quite as cute as Pikachu, but every bit as innocuous and it will take to the tonic water you feed it like a pre-teen boy does to Lindsay Lohan internet pics. Which is to say—with unbridled enthusiasm!