Return to the good old days: Gin geeks unite for a tasting of Old Tom

I recently joined a group of friends for what I considered to have been a momentous occasion: a tasting of Old Tom gin. What's Old Tom? you ask. It's a style of gin that is no longer on the market but was very popular, especially as a cocktail ingredient, before the enactment of Prohibition in 1920.

Old Tom was a sweetened gin -- that's right, they added sugar to it -- and it's thought that sugar first was added to gin back in the 1700s when distillation methods were somewhat crude, and some "off" flavors needed to be masked. That all changed in the mid-l9th century with the invention of the continuous still, which made it easier to produce a clean spirit suitable for gin production, but Old Tom stuck around for about a century and is an ingredient in many cocktail recipes written before 1940.

As far as I know, production of Old Tom gins, which were made by many different companies, ceased sometime in the 1960s, and it was a bottle from that decade that fell into my hands earlier this year. Mark Andrews, a friend of mine in the spirits industry, heard that I had a keen interest in Old Tom, and he wrote to tell me that he had found an unopened bottle of this all-but-extinct elixir in his parents' liquor cabinet. Shortly thereafter the bottle was in my living room. What a generous guy!

I must admit that I was tempted to keep the bottle for special occasions, but my conscience kept getting in the way. I know of quite a few cocktail geeks who would give their best shaker for a just a sip of true Old Tom, so I called them together for a tasting.

Generosity once again came into play when Mark Grossich, owner of Beekman Bar and Books in Manhattan, offered his bar as the venue where we could all meet to find out what Old Tom was all about. Beekman Bar and Books is one of a small chain of Bar and Books lounges in Manhattan; they are all plush, comfortable rooms where customers can relax over great drinks and hors d'oeuvre while being pampered by a very well-trained staff. The atmosphere was perfect for the tasting.

But Grossich didn't just allow us to use his bar; he also donated the services of Lou Cantres, head bartender for the whole chain, who poured our drinks and made some classic cocktails with our sweetened gin. Lou is a consummate bartender who has an abundant knowledge of cocktails and mixed drinks from the past and the present. And he swings a mean wrist when wielding a cocktail shaker, too. We were in very capable hands.

You could be wondering how Old Tom gin got its name, and if so, you're not alone. A few stories are bandied about on that subject, and my favorite tale concerns Dudley Bradstreet, a man who lived in London in the mid-1700s and illegally sold gin from his house. His autobiography, "The Life and Uncommon Adventures of Captain Dudley Bradstreet," detailed the method he used to avoid the long arm of the law.

Apparently he put a sign, in the shape of a cat, outside the window of his house, and he fixed a metal pipe that extended through the window into the house, behind the cat's paw. He wrote, "... at last I heard the chink of money and a comfortable voice say, 'Puss, give me two pennyworth of gin!' I instantly put my mouth to the tube and bid them receive it from the pipe under her paw." It's just possible, some people theorize, that Old Tom got its name from Bradstreet's cat.

Whatever the origin of the name, the Old Tom gin turned out to be a memorable treat. We had no idea just how sweet this spirit was going to be, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that it had just a slight hint of sugar that balanced nicely with the botanicals. I hope that some day soon somebody will reintroduce Old Tom, so we can all taste cocktails from the past, just as they were made in "the good old days."

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