The Impatient Chef Comes Out of Hiding with a Gin Review

The Impatient Chef has been on a barely deserved vacation, and has not posted anything in over two months.  So, you might ask, why now?  

Well, why not?

The real reason is that The Impatient Chef forgot his gin while traveling.  The Impatient Chef's alter ego, Gary Quay, moonlights as a photographer, and he was on Washington's Key Peninsula to hang an exhibit, and wanted a martini in the hotel to end the evening (hence the crappy iPhone pic above).  It just so happens that a distillery is a few doors up.

The distillery is called Heritage Distilling  Co.  It hails from Eugene, Oregon, but has a tasting room in Gig Harbor, Washington.  I stopped by to see which gin would work for my martini.  This review will be in two parts: 1)  Tasting notes, and 2) How good is the martini.  Sometimes a gin tastes really good neat (warm from the bottle), but makes a horrible martini.  Sometimes the opposite is true.  

Come on this journey with me from the tasting room to the cocktail glass.  

I tasted two gins.  The first is called Batch 12.  

Tasting notes:

Clean, mild juniper taste, not heavy on botanicals. It has a bright taste similar to London Dry Gins like Bombay and Plymouth, but slightly dirtier (not a bad thing).  My guess is that the juniper is added before distilling, or filtering removes some of the flavor.

The second is Elk Rider.

Tasting notes:  

Clean, heavier juniper taste, peppery flavor, and a darker complexion.  It has a slightly yellow color, usually meaning that juniper is added after distilling, and less is filtered out.  It's similar to London Dry gins like Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire.

I am not afraid of juniper, so I bought the Elk Rider.  

How Good is The Martini:

3 olives, 1/4 oz vermouth, and gin.  Stirred, not shaken, like martinis are supposed to be made.  The drink turned mildly cloudy.  The only other gin that I am aware of acts that way is Joe Penney's Gin from McMennamin's Edgefield Distillery.  That gin revolutionized my taste for gin, and the martini.  McMannamin's calls it an "American Dry" gin.  There is a similar gin style called the "Portland Dry", epitomized by New Deal Distillery's Gin 33, that put Portland, Oregon on the map for gins.  Elk Rider in a dry martini is a cross between Joe Penney's and Gin 33.  The Impatient Chef suggests you buy a bottle of each.  

Martini tasting notes: 

Notes of citrus, and a flavor that makes a nod toward genever gins, but without the astringent sourness that makes them unpalatable in a martini.  It's unusual, but delicious.  In the martini, it was nothing like a London Dry.  The Impatient Chef finds this mildly amusing.  

Conclusion:

If you participate in the heresy that is the vodka martini, or prefer lighter gins like New Amsterdam, you will hate this gin.  The Impatient Chef is okay with that, and loves this gin.  

This gin would work in the Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail.