A surprising Old Tom Gin infused with tropical botanicals and a touch of sweet.
In 2009, Ben Iravani opened a trendy bar in Aberdeen, Scotland. Even as that business flourished, he had dreams of something more. Alex Lawrence joined the bar team and shared the passion for crafting a custom Spirit. Soon they had recruited a local friend — Josh Rennie — to join them. And after years of experimentation they came up with their ideal recipe of botanicals infusions and a unique method to extract them using cold vacuum distillation to avoid heating up the ingredients. They were helped to create their special vacuum still by Professor Andrew Porter of the University of Aberdeen and named their Spirit after him.
This Gin is kind of difficult to describe because it’s a bit outside the box. Porter’s Tropical Old Tom Gin is a slightly sweeter version of Porter’s core Gin. They take the same base G&L Spirit, but they use their cold vacuum still to infuse a collection of exotic botanicals, including Guava, passion fruit, and white tea. This combination strikes a very interesting sweet/savory note and makes a wonderful change-up in Gin cocktails — especially a Negroni in our opinion. There’s just nothing else like it on the market today.
Smartass Corner:
The evaporation and boiling point of any liquid are a function of temperature and pressure. Vacuum distillation lowers the air pressure until the boiling point drops to ambient air temp. Porter’s Gin uses this process to prevent "cooking" certain botanicals during infusion.