Brothers Old Tom Gin

Gin description

Brothers Old Tom Gin is a gin recipe popular in 18th-century England that is now rarely available. It is rumored that distillers would add sugar to a poorly made batch of Gin to mask the flavor, and make it more palatable. It is slightly sweeter than London Dry, but slightly drier than Dutch/Holland Gin/Jenever, thus is sometimes called The Missing Link. The name Old Tom Gin purportedly came from wooden plaques shaped like a black cat (an Old Tom) mounted on the outside wall of some pubs above a public walkway in 18th-century England. After a pedestrian deposited a penny in the cat's mouth, they would place their lips around a small tube between the cat's paws. From the tube would come a shot of gin, poured by the bartender inside the pub.