Ageing Waterloo Gin at Treaty Oak Distilling

The idea that gin is only a clear spirit is so 2020 – resting gin in barrels has taken off around the world

In the not-so-distant past, gins were often stored and transported in wooden casks as a matter of necessity. And these barrels weren’t necessarily new, either. The barrel storing gin today might have held a different gin yesterday and maybe a wine or whisky before that. Glass, plastic and other conveyances or fresh barrels were either prohibitively expensive, or just weren’t invented yet. When you see a gin referred to by name in a 19th-century cocktail manual, it’s likely that it spent part of its life in an old barrel.

However, here’s where an important distinction needs to be made. The barrel-aged gins of today are made with intention, compared to the barrel-aged resting out of necessity of their predecessors. Distillers and producers today are choosing to use barrels for their transformative powers.

While barrel-aged gin feels very new and on trend today, even intentional barrel resting has historical precedent. In 1934, an ad boasted, “Booth’s House of Lords is not an ordinary gin. It is triple distilled by one of England’s oldest distilleries then aged for years in casks.”