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Gin is neutral spirit flavoured with juniper, and the law says how.
Gin is neutral alcohol of agricultural origin flavoured with juniper berries. That is the whole of the legal definition in Great Britain, with two conditions attached: the taste must be predominantly juniper, and the bottle must hold 37.5% ABV or more. The grain, the other botanicals, the still and the water are the distiller’s choice, and the law says nothing about where it is made.
The law does grade it. Plain gin may be made by adding flavourings to the spirit. Distilled gin must go back through a still with its juniper. London gin must take every flavour from that run and almost nothing afterwards. The grade is printed on the label as the legal name, and it tells you how the flavour got in, not how good the gin is.
Two neighbours are often mistaken for gin. Sloe gin is a liqueur, defined separately, with a floor of 25% ABV. Genever is the juniper spirit of the Low Countries, a protected name in its own category with a floor of 30% ABV. Neither may be sold as gin, and a fruit drink below 37.5% ABV with gin in the name is a gin liqueur, not a gin.
UK law grades gin by how the flavour gets in.
The British rules are Regulation (EC) No 110/2008, Annex II, categories 19 to 22, kept in UK law after the EU exit and published on legislation.gov.uk. The European Union replaced the regulation in 2019 with Regulation (EU) 2019/787, and the Gin Guild’s reproduction of its Annex I shows the same four categories at the same strengths. The table sets out what each category requires.
The legal categories of gin in Great Britain, Regulation (EC) No 110/2008, Annex II
19
- Legal name on the label
- Juniper-flavoured spirit drink
- How the flavour gets in
- Juniper added to spirit, grain spirit or grain distillate; other flavourings allowed if juniper is discernible
- Minimum strength
- 30% ABV
- After the still
- Flavourings, colour, sugar; genever carries this name under its own protected rules
20
- Legal name on the label
- Gin
- How the flavour gets in
- Flavouring substances or preparations added to neutral spirit; no still required; juniper must predominate
- Minimum strength
- 37.5% ABV
- After the still
- Flavourings, colour, sugar; dry only at 0.1 g/L of sugar or less
21
- Legal name on the label
- Distilled gin
- How the flavour gets in
- Neutral spirit at 96% ABV or more redistilled with juniper and other natural botanicals
- Minimum strength
- 37.5% ABV
- After the still
- More spirit of the same quality, flavourings, colour, sugar; dry only at 0.1 g/L or less
22
- Legal name on the label
- London gin, or London dry gin
- How the flavour gets in
- As distilled gin, with every flavour from the still and all plant material present; distillate at 70% ABV or more
- Minimum strength
- 37.5% ABV
- After the still
- Water, more pure spirit and at most 0.1 g/L of sugar; no colour, no flavourings
37
- Legal name on the label
- Sloe gin
- How the flavour gets in
- Sloes macerated in gin, sloe juice allowed; a liqueur, not a gin
- Minimum strength
- 25% ABV
- After the still
- Sugar to at least 100 g/L; only natural flavourings
| Category | Legal name on the label | How the flavour gets in | Minimum strength | After the still |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Juniper-flavoured spirit drink | Juniper added to spirit, grain spirit or grain distillate; other flavourings allowed if juniper is discernible | 30% ABV | Flavourings, colour, sugar; genever carries this name under its own protected rules |
| 20 | Gin | Flavouring substances or preparations added to neutral spirit; no still required; juniper must predominate | 37.5% ABV | Flavourings, colour, sugar; dry only at 0.1 g/L of sugar or less |
| 21 | Distilled gin | Neutral spirit at 96% ABV or more redistilled with juniper and other natural botanicals | 37.5% ABV | More spirit of the same quality, flavourings, colour, sugar; dry only at 0.1 g/L or less |
| 22 | London gin, or London dry gin | As distilled gin, with every flavour from the still and all plant material present; distillate at 70% ABV or more | 37.5% ABV | Water, more pure spirit and at most 0.1 g/L of sugar; no colour, no flavourings |
| 37 | Sloe gin | Sloes macerated in gin, sloe juice allowed; a liqueur, not a gin | 25% ABV | Sugar to at least 100 g/L; only natural flavourings |
One word carries a legal meaning that surprises people. Dry means no more than 0.1 grams of added sugar per litre, and a gin or a distilled gin may call itself dry only if it meets that figure. London gin may always add the word, because its own rule is already stricter.
Outside the UK the figures move. The United States defines gin in its federal standards of identity at 40% ABV or more, and lets a distilled gin be labelled dry, London or Old Tom. In Britain only London is a legal term; dry is a sugar limit and Old Tom is a custom.
Gin may be made without a still.
Category 20 is the floor. Gin may be made by flavouring suitable neutral spirit with juniper and other flavourings, and the regulation does not require a still at any point. The trade calls this compounding, and the result is lawful gin so long as juniper leads the taste and the bottle reaches 37.5% ABV. It may not be called distilled gin.
Distilled gin goes through the still, and may be flavoured after it.
Category 21 requires the spirit, at 96% ABV or more, to be redistilled in stills traditionally used for gin with juniper and other natural botanicals. After the still the maker may add more spirit of the same quality and, if it wants, flavourings. That last clause is why a distilled gin can carry a cucumber or a raspberry that never saw the still.
London gin is a method, not a place.
Category 22 is distilled gin with four more rules: every flavour must come through the still with all the plant material present, the distillate must leave the still at 70% ABV or more, nothing may be added afterwards but water, more pure spirit and at most 0.1 grams of sugar a litre, and no colouring at all. No city is named. A London gin can be made anywhere, and London Dry gin sets out the rules in full.
Seven botanicals do most of the work.
Juniper is the only botanical the law requires, and most of the others are there to frame it. Coriander seed, angelica root, orris root, citrus peel, liquorice and cassia bark turn up in recipe after recipe, with cardamom, pepper, nutmeg and a long tail of others behind them. Each does a job.
Juniper is the one the law requires.
Juniperus communis, the species the regulation names. Its dried berries, strictly seed cones, give the pine, resin and pepper that make gin taste of gin. The oil content varies with the harvest, so distillers test each batch and adjust the recipe to keep the spirit consistent.
Coriander seed warms and lengthens it.
The second botanical in most gins. Coriander seed brings a warm, spicy citrus note that sits under the juniper and lengthens it. Too much reads as soap to some drinkers; too little leaves the juniper bare.
Angelica root holds the rest together.
Angelica root is earthy and dry, with a note of damp woodland. Its practical job is to bind: it holds the lighter aromatics together and keeps them from flying off in the glass.
Orris root fixes the aromatics.
The dried rhizome of the iris. Orris root smells faintly of violet and, like angelica, fixes the other flavours in place. It is used in small amounts because it is expensive and because a little goes a long way.
Citrus peel gives the top note.
Dried or fresh lemon, orange and sometimes grapefruit peel. The oils give the bright, fresh top note and a gentle heat. Citrus-led gins push this element forward and are the ones that suit a lighter tonic.
Liquorice root sweetens without sugar.
Liquorice root adds sweetness without sugar and a soft, rounded texture. It also carries a faint aniseed edge. In an old London gin it would have taken the place of the sugar that Old Tom kept.
Cassia and the warm spices sit at the back.
Cassia bark is the cinnamon of most gin recipes, warmer and coarser than true cinnamon. Cardamom, pepper, nutmeg and clove sit in the same group, giving warmth at the back of the palate. Modern distillers add almost anything to this list, saffron and pine needles among them.
Four methods turn neutral spirit into gin.
Nearly every gin starts as spirit someone else made. The Gin Guild’s guidance says most distillers buy neutral spirit rectified to 96% ABV, usually from wheat, though potatoes, molasses, grapes and apples all serve, and the regulation requires that purity for the two distilled grades. A few make their own base and say so on the label.
Compounding adds flavour without a still.
Compounding adds flavourings, essences or botanical extracts to the neutral spirit and bottles the result. No still is involved after the base spirit is made. The Gin Guild calls it the cheaper method; it is lawful gin under category 20, and it may not be described as distilled.
Steeping in a pot still is the traditional redistillation.
The traditional method steeps the botanicals in diluted spirit inside a copper pot still, sometimes for a day or more, then runs the still. The vapour carries the oils over and the result is a strong, aromatic distillate. Most London gins are made this way.
Vapour infusion hangs the botanicals in the still head.
In vapour infusion the botanicals sit in a basket in the head of the still or in a separate chamber, and the rising spirit vapour passes through them rather than boiling with them. It extracts the lighter, fresher oils and leaves the heavier ones behind, so the gin comes out brighter and softer.
One-shot and multi-shot differ in concentration.
One-shot distilling runs the full recipe of botanicals for a batch and cuts the distillate with water alone. Multi-shot runs a heavier charge of botanicals to make a concentrate, then cuts it with more of the same neutral spirit and water. Both are lawful for distilled and London gin, and the Gin Guild notes that blind tasters cannot usually tell them apart.
Gin began as genever and became English in the 1700s.
Gin descends from genever, the juniper spirit of the Netherlands and Flanders, and the English word is a clipping of the Dutch one. The dates matter because the spirit changed each time it moved.
The Low Countries made it first.
Wikipedia’s history of gin, a secondary source, records juniper spirits taxed as drinks in Holland in 1606, so they had stopped being only medicine by then. The spirit was distilled from malt wine, a low-strength grain distillate that kept the taste of the grain, and juniper and other herbs were added to it. English soldiers in the Low Countries are said to have met it, and by the same account jenever appears in an English play of 1623, Massinger’s The Duke of Milan.
William of Orange made it cheap, and London made it a crisis.
Wikipedia’s account ties the rise of gin in England to the accession of William of Orange in 1688, after which imported spirits such as French brandy carried heavy duty and gin could be distilled without a licence. Cheap grain spirit flavoured with juniper flooded London. The period from the 1690s to the 1750s is the Gin Craze, and Wikipedia’s article on it puts English consumption at 2.2 gallons a head a year by 1743.
The Gin Acts of 1736 and 1751 ended the craze.
Wikipedia’s article on the Gin Craze counts five Gin Acts, passed in 1729, 1736, 1743, 1747 and 1751. Its article on the Act of 1736 records 20 shillings a gallon on retail sales and a £50 licence for sellers; the Gin Craze article says only two licences were ever taken out and the law was effectively repealed in 1743. Wikipedia’s article on the Act of 1751 records Royal Assent on 25 June 1751, a ban on distillers selling to unlicensed merchants, and retail licences confined to substantial property holders. Hogarth’s Gin Lane was published the same year. By the same Wikipedia account, tighter licensing and rising grain prices did the rest, and the craze was over by 1757.
The column still made London dry possible.
Wikipedia’s history of gin says gin in the 1700s came off pot stills and was often sweetened; the style survives as Old Tom. Wikipedia’s article on the column still dates Aeneas Coffey’s patent for his continuous still to 1830, and clean neutral spirit at high strength became practical. Distillers no longer needed sugar to cover a rough base, and the dry, juniper-led London style grew out of that during the nineteenth century. British craft spirits picks the story up with the small distilleries of the 2000s.
Gin’s styles are set by method, sugar and strength, not by law.
Only London gin is a legal style. The rest are conventions, brands or protected names from elsewhere, and gin styles compared sets them side by side with the drinks written for each.
London Dry is the grade most bottles are made to: juniper-led, unsweetened, all flavour from the still. Old Tom is lightly sweetened and has no definition in GB law. Plymouth is one distillery’s gin; The Spirits Business reported in 2014 that its owner was giving up the protected name, which lapsed in 2015. Navy strength is a bottling strength of about 57% ABV, not a recipe. Genever is a protected spirit with malt wine in the base, and in law it is a juniper-flavoured spirit drink rather than a gin.
Contemporary gins keep the juniper lead the law demands and push another botanical forward: cucumber, rose, citrus or local herbs. Flavoured gins add fruit or flavourings after the still, so they are distilled gin at best and never London gin, and they still have to reach 37.5% ABV. Below that, or without juniper in front, the bottle is a gin liqueur. Sloe gin is the one liqueur with gin in its legal name, defined on its own at 25% ABV or more, and how to make sloe gin covers the hedgerow version.
Gin is drunk long with tonic, stirred with vermouth, or neat with water.
Gin was built to be mixed, and its three classic serves ask different things of it.
The Gin and Tonic is one part to two.
The Gin and Tonic is 50ml of gin to 100ml of tonic over a full glass of ice, in a copa or a highball. Wikipedia’s article on the gin and tonic, a secondary source, traces tonic to quinine taken against malaria in British India and dates the first tonic water sold to 1858. The tonic water page sets out the styles, and which tonic suits which gin is the pairing.
The Martini is gin seasoned with vermouth.
The Martini is gin seasoned with dry vermouth, six to one in the house version, stirred and served up in a martini glass. The Martinez came before it on Old Tom and sweet vermouth, and the Negroni sets gin against Campari and vermouth in equal parts. Martini, Negroni and the gin and vermouth drinks covers the family.
The Collins family is the long drinks.
The Tom Collins is gin, lemon, sugar and soda built long over ice, and the Gimlet is gin and lime cordial, stirred. The Collins, the fizz, the rickey and the sling are one set of ingredients built four ways, and the gin long drinks compared tells them apart.
Tasting gin neat follows the rum method.
Taste gin the way you would taste rum: a tulip glass, a small pour, a sniff from a distance before a close one, a sip, and then a few drops of water to open it. How to taste rum gives the method step by step. Juniper, citrus and the warm spices arrive in that order in most gins, and the water shows which botanical the distiller put in front.
The label tells you the grade, the strength and little else.
The legal name is the first line to read. Gin, distilled gin or London gin tells you how the flavour got in. Juniper-flavoured spirit drink means a lower floor of 30% ABV, or a genever. Liqueur, or a fruit name with gin liqueur, means sugar and a strength that may be as low as 15% ABV.
Then the strength. Most gin is bottled between 37.5% and 47% ABV, and the house cocktail recipes assume 40%. Navy strength on the label means about 57% ABV and no more than that; it is not a legal term. ABV vs proof explains where the 57% figure comes from.
Dry on a gin or distilled gin means 0.1 grams of sugar a litre at most. Old Tom means the opposite, some sugar, and nothing fixes how much. A protected name such as genever tells you where the spirit was made; London does not. Words like handcrafted and small batch have no definition, and a compounded gin may use them as freely as a distilled one. What spirits to stock at home puts gin first on the list and explains which bottle to buy.
The facts here come from the regulation and the record.
The British definitions of juniper-flavoured spirit drinks, gin, distilled gin and London gin are Regulation (EC) No 110/2008, Annex II, categories 19 to 22, as retained in UK law and read on legislation.gov.uk on 12 October 2026; the liqueur floor is category 32 and sloe gin is category 37 of the same annex. The EU text is Regulation (EU) 2019/787, Annex I, categories 19 to 22. The United States figure is 27 CFR 5.144, read on the same day.
The Gin Acts are the Spirit Duties Act 1735, usually called the Gin Act 1736, and the Sale of Spirits Act 1750, usually called the Gin Act 1751, which received Royal Assent on 25 June 1751. The 1606 Dutch tax, the 1623 play, the consumption figure for 1743 and Coffey’s patent of 1830 come from Wikipedia’s articles on gin, the Gin Craze and the column still, which are secondary sources. The production methods follow the Gin Guild’s published guidance of July 2024.