Bee Gin Again

A Buzz About Brown Gin

When Covid protocols allow, drive through one of Goleta’s sprawling industrial parks and then wander through a warren of hallways and offices to find Goleta Red Distilling Company. Open for three years this April, the brainchild of Michael Craig does many things well, from rums to an overproof liqueur that marries orange and coffee and that is too easy to drink for its potency.

And then there’s what seems like some freak of engineering, the brown gin. You read that correctly—if I just poured a shot of it for you in a glass, you would assume you were about down some rye. Actually, it’s Goodland Barrel Rested Gin, which starts with Craig’s Goodland Gin—silver medalist at the 2019 ADI tasting of Craft Spirits—that is then aged for six months in small brand-new American oak heavily charred barrels (ones he originally bought to make bourbon, but that’s still coming).

Goleta Red isn’t the only distillery playing with barrels and gin—it’s been a thing since at least 2008, and once NPR has written a story about a trend, you can’t feel too exclusive about it. (Plus, historically, gin got shipped around in barrels that in their woody way did stuff to the contents, so really this is just everything old is new again, especially if people think they can market it.) Do note none of the barrel-aged gins use the word “aged” on their labels, as the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau won’t allow it. The government doesn’t yet recognize this as a thing.

All that said, the Goodland Barrel Rested Gin is a potent platypus of a pour—the very citrus-forward, less juniper-bomb gin is there, but it’s got a bit of tannins, now, too, both depth and polish. And it means it’s irresistible if you like to putter around with ways to re-invent classic cocktails.

In fact, I thought it was the bee’s knees. No, I’m not that old, make that The Bee’s Knees, as in the Prohibition-era cocktail most likely created by Frank Meier, head barman at the Ritz in Paris. He was most likely a resistance fighter during WWII, and author of 1936’s The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, which included a chapter on handicapping horses. Different, amazing times. The drink is a mere three-ingredients simple— gin, honey water, lemon. And back then, when gins more often originated in bathtubs, the more of the latter two ingredients, the better.

So imagine what the drink, which I’ve dubbed the Bee Gin Again Cocktail, is like today, not just with a good gin, but a barrel-rested gin? You want all those botanicals (the very Goleta avocado leaf and red peppercorn included), plus their oaky edge, to show. Using Meyer lemon is not only delicious, so fragrant and floral, but also a phonetic nod to Frank Meier.

And then there’s honey water. Think of it as richer simple syrup, and you’re not using any bad-for-you white sugar, either. Even better, we can score all sorts of local honey. So while you might not be drinking your immediate local landscape if your backyard isn’t lucky enough to be graced with hives, it’s always possible a busy bee visited your yard on its pollinating way.

I used some of Rick Sawyer’s Hollister Ranch Honey, raw, unfiltered, unheated and rich with some wild sage. It’s good to thin it a bit with water, as that makes it easier to mix into the cocktail and makes things a tad less sweet, too. It doesn’t hurt to give the honey water one last extra zip of flavor by tossing in some fresh thyme; just be sure to strain it out as you don’t want little green flecks in the finished drink.