How much is gin?

The price of a 70cl bottle of gin in the UK can range from the low to mid teens for supermarket and mass market brands through the £30 to £50 range for small batch ‘craft’ gins to well over £100 for specialist bottles.

Things to watch out for:

• 50cl bottles: Don’t be fooled by the lower price for the smaller bottle. You’re getting a lot less gin!
• Gin liqueurs: These drinks have much less alcohol content. As a result the maker has to pay less duty - so they can charge less. Some question whether they should even be allowed to have 'gin' in their name, as many don’t taste of juniper (the key characteristic of any gin!)
• Supermarket: Own brands are often the cheapest gins on the market. And supermarkets often discount big brand names like Gordon’s. Watch out for discounts on smaller more ‘crafty’ brands too.
• Craft gins: are often of better quality - York Gin, for example has won a string of gold medals at the world’s top spirits competitions. Take a look at our gins here

Why do smaller gin brands tend to cost more?

The main reasons include:

1. Lack of economies of scale: So all the things smaller companies buy are a lot more expensive than they are for the bigger distilleries. A thousand bottles have a phenomenally bigger unit price than a million bottles.
2. The same goes for mechanisation - once bottling and labelling machines have been paid for, the staff costs become vanishingly small, for example. The craft distilleries generally bottle and label by hand: time-consuming processes.
3. Margins: the huge distilleries sell so many units that their margins can be cut to the bone. In order for a smaller gin maker to make a profitable business, each bottle must make more profit.

York Gin is firmly in the small distillery camp - which means our gins are just below the £40 mark. They are definitely high on the quality index - having won many gold awards at the world’s top spirits competitions.

Take a look at our gins here