CITADELLE No Mistake Old Tom Gin

In 1836, while strolling through the bars of London, Charles Dickens marvelled at "the ingenuity employed in calling gin a sobriquet, by terms each more seductive than the other, to describe it in many ways". "No Mistake" is one of those nicknames that Dickens wrote down, and it seemed appropriate to us for our Old Tom gin, which we have created in honour of this superb elixir. Alexandre Gabriel's challenge was to take a popular 19th-century gin and give it a new lease of life. During his frequent trips to the Caribbean, he came across a fabulous brown sugar, Demerara-style, moist and heavy. It was the missing ingredient. In copper cauldrons, this sugar is first toasted for an initial caramelisation phase, then lightly blondied and finally alcoholic. It is then aged for 3 to 4 months in brandy casks. To create his Old Tom, the Cellar Master's skill consists of dosing Citadelle Réserve, chosen for its floral aspect, with 35-40 g of aged sugar, then putting everything back into the casks for a few months, to obtain the right integration of all the elements, an ideal blend for 46% alcohol.