Ransom Old Tom Gin

The Scotch-o-Bourbo Gin.

Tad Seestedt named his company Ransom after the debt he incurred when starting the business. He felt as if he was ransoming his financial future to the little business venture that he started in 1997. They started with wine, then went to Brandy and that inspired them to step out into their own Dry Vermouth and in the end their specialicious Gin. Everything was produced in the single, hand-hammered, copper alembic still.

“Old Tom” style Gin was the first Gin made in the United States, and it was the kind of Gin that most of the classic cocktails were based on. If you haven’t had the Old Tom style before, think of it like a “Scotch-o-Bourbo-Gin.” The base wort is malted barley, just like Scotch Whisky. But the Gin-like botanicals are infused into pure corn distillate. Then the whole concoction is distilled in copper alembic stills and barrel-aged in ex-wine French oak casks for up to a year.

There are a few Old Tom style, barrel-aged Gins on the market now, but Ransom was the first to give it a go. The list of botanicals is right out of the book: juniper, orange peel, lemon peel, coriander seed, angelica root, and cardamom pods, but their care and attention to detail is something special. This is a must-have for every serious cocktail nerd and nerd-ette.

Fun Fact:
Barrel-aging Gin in America was a bit of an accident. Gin producers in America would whoop-up a batch and place into barrels for shipment (bottle shipments were not yet commonplace). But America is a big place, and it could take months for a shipment to reach the customer by wagon before it was consumed. Turns out, that was not such a bad thing.