Dodd’s Organic Old Tom 700ml

46% ABV. 500ml. For any new to this category, in basic terms Old Tom is an older style of gin recipe – traditionally slightly sweeter – bridging the gap between modern London Dry gin and the older Genever. The London Distillery Co. team have been playing around with an Old Tom style for as long as we have known them. There have been trials using honey as a sweetener, as well as barrel maturation experiments to add sweetness and body. After all this, the final recipe uses neither technique.

In fact, unlike the majority of Old Tom gins on the market, Dodd’s use no added sweetening agent at all, relying instead on a high dose of liquorice to impart its natural ‘sweetness’ (and bulk up the body), much as would have been the case in Ralph Dodd’s day (when sugar was extremely expensive). Distilled in Dodd’s 140-litre copper alembic, ‘Christina’, utilising an organic grain base, the Dodd’s Old Tom leaves out the London Honey and red raspberry leaf of the original Dodd’s recipe and introduces fennel seed, lemon peel, that healthy dose of liquorice (which delivers the mouthfeel and sweetness), alongside juniper, angelica and fresh lime. The distillery’s customised rotavap, christened ‘Little Albion’ has its part to play too, with bay leaf, green and black cardamom and fennel all cold distilled under vacuum, before the two spirits are blended and rested for up to four weeks before bottling.