Volante Gin
London, remembered.
We chose Volante because we wanted one hand to hold the entire spirit shelf — and found it in a country that has distilled for centuries. Four classics, remembered without the alcohol, each built for the ritual it came from. The London Botanical is the aromatic one.
It keeps the London Dry faith the hard way: juniper, several times more of it than many proofed gins carry, because here the juniper has nothing to hide behind. Resinous, piney, unmistakable — and beneath it, a composition of nineteen botanicals: red grapefruit peel's bright bitterness, bergamot, cucumber's cool lightness, cardamom's warmth, rosemary's clean resinous lift. No sweeteners, no sugar at all — bone-dry, with a subtle warmth at the close.
Juniper-led, and surprising in the richness of its aroma.
We do not score. We read. The Reading is how the house locates this bottle — four axes, written on the four petals of the mark.
The Reading™
NOSE juniper
ARC crisp
WEIGHT clean
STAY dry
One to four petals, quiet to pronounced. A Reading is a location, not a grade.
Poured in — the Savage Lowball over one large rock with a ribbon of grapefruit; or tall in the Savage Highball, with tonic, as London intended.
Serve — cold. At the bar it stands up in the composed Martini and the Gimlet — the juniper carrying where the proof once did. Once open, it keeps four weeks — pour accordingly.
