The herbals in Botanist are very complex. Makes an excellent gin and tonic. I love Empress with fever tree elderflower tonic. If I’m feeling super fancy, I’ll add a splash of St. Germain elderflower liquor. I love elderflower
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These I’ve wanted to get, but for now I’m using up other gins. But it’s good to know they’re good outside of what I’ve seen from ads and YouTuber recs.
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Do you have to pluck them and take the bones out first?
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Reminds me of:
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What?
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i think i’ve tried that St Laurent before and rather liked it.
the Saint Augustine distillery makes a version of their wildly botanical gin that has been aged in whiskey barrels. not a gin and tonic gin, but intriguing in its complexity. i brought some home to share with Dear Brother on his last visit down here. we both are gin drinkers and sipped this one over ice with a bit of lime.
also agree with @anon23281680 , Botanist is damn fine gin. the bottle is super cool, too!
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gin certainy smells better!
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Making cornbread today.
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[checks flights from miami to wuppertal]
i’m coming for your gin to sample. i am all in your gin!
(i’ll even bring some Saint Augustine)
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Anytime, anytime…
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We have to work very early in the morning, if we get back before lunch I’m making Jiffy Corn Muffins for breakfast while watching Columbo.
Probably not as good as homemade but tasty nonetheless.
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The bottle and label design. That’s what I flashed on, when seeing the gin bottle.
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Good, good… I was getting worried a bit there…
This did lead me down another rabbit hole, though. For anyone who’s interested:
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You can drink it, sort of. Farina’s “aqua mirabilis” was originally sold as a tonic to be applicated internally as well as externally - but it’s 80+% alcohol (Not 80 proof, mind you, alc/vol). And you thought Absinthe was cool and wild!
Maybe that’s why Dr. Frank-N-Furter has a “4711” tattoo. Or maybe not. It sometimes pops up as “a men’s cologne” in popular culture, anyway. -
Apparently at one point it was misused as surrogate alcohol to such an extent that 4711 was the original telephone number of the Finnish Poison Information Centre. Currently, the number directs to the branch exchange of Helsinki University Hospital.
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In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte (Yes, that one. Cologne was French at the time. European history; whaddaya gonna do.) decreed that “secret recepies” for anything intended to be taken internally had to be disclosed. The makers didn’t want to do that, so strictly external application it was.
This seems to be more or less the point where it became a more of a perfume than a tonic.
The formula is still “secret”. Apparently modern analytics hasn’t been invented yet. -
The flacon hasn’t substantially changed since the 1820ies. It is based on a design by Peter Heinrich Molanus (who is a very obscure figure, I couldn’t find anything on him at a pinch).
An early example of industrial design; not that anyone would have called it that at the time.
Better to stack and pack for storage and transport. Easier to glue the label on. The circular bulge at the neck provides a little bit of extra volume for the alcohol to expand when the bottle gets warm so the top (then a cork) won’t pop off. -
4711 is a mnemonic device - the average human spleen should be around 4 x 7 x 11 cm.
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Vladimir Ussachevsky , a pioneer in electronic music, composed a work called Improvisation on 4711.
And so on and on. A lot more interesting stuff than I expected.
Apparently their strategy is to keep the traditional, established Eau de Colgne going while setting up a modernized version as a lifestyle brand.
Sources:
Wikipedia (EN)
Wikipedia (DE)
Deutsches Historisches Museum
4711 (EN)
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You have fully satisfied my TIL for the day, and I haven’t even had breakfast yet!
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They’re one of the few baking mixes I’ll use, I like their old-tymey charm. Marketed in the 1930s as “so easy even a man could do it.”[1]
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The Jiffy company in general is well run. Wages are high, benefits good and they have refused to raise the price of the box beyond necessity for decades. And the product is good.
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