Beyond Beer: Germany Goes All In for Gin 5

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/dining/germany-gin.html

BERLIN — Bar Convent Berlin, a sprawling trade show held in October in a former train station here, heralded every sort of spirit. There was a booth pouring a new German gin. There was a stand mixing daiquiris with rum from Cuba. Nearby was a new German gin. Around the corner, a Campari bar was handing out Negronis. Further down the aisle was a new German gin.

Notice a pattern? Germany, the land of beer, riesling and schnapps, has gone gin mad. In the last decade, the number of small gin distillers has exploded.

An exact figure is hard to pin down, but many here say there are now hundreds of gin makers. And the nation is giving England and Spain a run for their money in its love of the gin and tonic.*

“It is a common joke to say that not a week passes without a new gin on the market,” said Dariusz Kulakowski, a bartender at Limonadier, a cocktail bar in Berlin where he said gin “flows like a river.”

“The only liquid that can compete with it in Limonadier, amount-wise, is fresh lime and lemon juice,” he said. “In the past, bars said that vodka pays the bills. Scrap that. It’s truly gin that is the big moneymaker.”

There’s no specific demographic for this fad: Everybody, it seems, is drinking gin. “It’s unbelievable,” said Jörg Meyer, a prominent German bartender and the owner of Le Lion, a cocktail bar in Hamburg. “Corner pubs are now serving gin and tonics. It’s all over.”

The flood has even seeped into the home liquor cabinet. “What is big at home is gin and tonic, for every party,” Mr. Meyer said. “They don’t buy one tonic, they buy three, and six gins, so you can mix. They may have one good bourbon, one good vodka, but they have five, six gins.”

Danilo Don Ranasinghe, a regular at Le Lion, said he has four gins at home, including Berliner Brandstifter, made in Berlin, and Triple Peak, from Bremen. “Gin is a win-win proposition for all involved,” he said. “Low investment barrier to produce, decent margin for bars, great variety of tastes and mixability for consumers.”

Mr. Meyer said the new crush on juniper is all part of the rising fortunes of gin worldwide, a boom helped along by the classic cocktail movement, which has prompted drinkers to rediscover the spirit. The makers of the Duke Gin, in Munich, credited Germans’ new interest in the provenance of what they are eating and drinking.

Mr. Kulakowski said the local nature of the products, each with its distinctive blend of botanicals like lemon verbena and linden bloom, has an attraction. “Suddenly a gin and tonic is not just a gin and tonic,” he said. “It’s a story in a glass, and people will get moved by it.”

The Duke, first produced in 2008, is among the more prominent of the new gins. Many bartenders and distillers agree that the rush to gin began with Adler Berlin Dry Gin in 2005.

But the best-known brand so far is the fancifully named Monkey 47, made in the Black Forest. It quickly attracted a following after arriving in 2010. This year, after years of climbing sales, the brand was bought by Pernod Ricard, the liquor conglomerate, making it the German gin most widely available in the United States.

Other notable labels include Siegfried Rheinland Dry Gin, Gin Sul from Hamburg and Windspiel Gin from the Volcanic Eifel region.

“I have seen gins come and go for more than six years, and there comes a time you stop counting,” said Alexander Stein, the chief executive of Monkey 47.

And Stephen Garbe, the founder and chief executive of Gin Sul, said the momentum shows no signs of slowing. “There are a lot of bandwagoners, late-movers and followers,” he said.