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Juniper and biodiversity: the boom of made in Italy gin

Apparently, among the staff of Buckingham Palace, there’s a belief that what keeps the royal women so long-lived is gin. Certainly, the Queen Mother, who died in 2002 at the age of 101, used to drink four cocktails a day and – according to what they say – even Elizabeth II had an innocent and unshakable passion for gin and tonic. A daily ritual that, according to court chronicles, she had to give up with great regret only in the final months of her life. A discreet little ritual that, with British grace and irony, accompanied an entire era.

But what is gin really? It’s an aromatic distillate, obtained from a fermented grain base, whose soul lies in the juniper – legally required – and whose character is shaped through a free selection of botanicals (herbs, roots, spices, flowers) left to macerate. A recipe that, in the hands of an expert distiller, becomes an almost unlimited expressive palette.

Italian gin today: botanicals and imagination

The history of gin has crossed all of Europe. The distillate most loved by English queens perhaps originated in the Garden of the Simples of the Salerno medical school, around the 13th century, not with a “recreational” purpose but with the aim of stabilizing the properties of juniper in a medicine that could be easily preserved and transported. The recipe was finalized around the mid-1600s in the Netherlands and then took England by storm, partly due to the availability of grains for distillation, partly due to a ban on importing foreign spirits, especially those produced by the hated French. Gin soon conquered the entire kingdom, becoming part of workers’ wages: the consequences were not exceptional, as one can easily imagine.

Today, the passion for gin is returning to Italy: not so much (not only) because of increased consumption, but rather due to the creative ferment that in recent years has lifted gin from a marginal distillate to a cultural phenomenon, making it one of the liveliest symbols of contemporary drinking. And if once the references were almost exclusively English, today the scene is dominated by over 800 Italian labels, with production covering the entire national territory and making biodiversity one of their main strengths.

Among the most used botanicals by Italian producers are bitter orange peel, clary sage, rosemary, lavender, helichrysum, and chamomile, but also bolder notes such as pink pepper, olive leaves, Genoese basil, peppermint, Amalfi lemon, wild caper, elderflower or myrtle berries. Each territory has its own voice, each recipe a personal signature. It’s no coincidence that, in Italy, this compositional freedom has found fertile ground: between the Piedmontese hills and the Apulian coasts, between alpine aromas and Mediterranean scents, each producer has managed to tell a piece of territory, a nuance of taste, a handcrafted identity.

An interesting – and perhaps little-known – fact is that Italy has always been a homeland of juniper. It grows spontaneously and abundantly here, and for centuries it has been used in cooking, herbalism, and liqueur-making. Italian distillers did not need to import a tradition, they simply rediscovered and enhanced a raw material already part of our culture.

Types of gin and gin-based cocktails

The most common types of gin include the London Dry – dry, sharp, essential – characterized by a single distillation and no added aromas after the process. It is the most classic version, the one best suited to versatile use in mixing. Alongside this, the Distilled Gin allows for greater creative freedom, permitting multiple distillations and the addition of botanicals even afterward. There are also Compound gins, obtained by simply infusing botanicals without distillation, and New Western gins, in which the juniper notes are not predominant but balanced with the other ingredients. Also increasingly common are the barrel aged gins, aged in barrels, which acquire color, softness, and spicy notes, and the so-called contemporary gins, cold-infused and often designed to evoke a floral or fruity bouquet.

A wide range that has found favor especially in cocktail bars, the preferred place of consumption for the Italian public. Unlike in other countries, where gin is also drunk neat or as a standalone aperitif, in Italy it is almost exclusively consumed within drinks, with the gin and tonic leading all rankings (but gin is also found in the Negroni, the Martini Cocktail, the Gin Fizz or the White Lady, just to name the most famous).

In the sparkling and competitive world of contemporary gin, the bottles also play a crucial role. Italian producers have invested heavily in the visual identity of the product, choosing thick glass, opaque or frosted transparencies, natural wood closures, illustrated labels and complex screen printing. Each bottle is (or should be) designed to be consistent with the identity of the product and its characteristics: geographic origin, the producer’s philosophy, the sensory universe of its contents. Some opt for square and austere shapes, others for soft and elegant lines, some include tactile details or graphic effects. The result is a design scene that enriches the product and plays a key role in the consumer’s choice, especially in the horeca channel and high-end venues.

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