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What is gin? And what is it made of?For a drink to be described as ‘gin’ in the UK it must meet two criteria:Strength of alcohol:It must be at least 37.5%ABV (alcohol by volume)Taste:It must taste predominantly of juniper.So gin is a distilled spirit with a minimum alcohol strength (it can be stronger than 37.5%) and juniper is the only mandatory ‘botanical’.(‘Botanicals’ are the herbs, spices, fruit etc that are added to the alcohol to give the gin its flavour.) Popular botanicals include coria …

The major difference between gin liqueurs and gin is that gin liqueurs have more sugar and a lower alcohol content than proper gin.While gin must have a minimum 37.5% ABV (alcohol by volume), gin liqueurs are usually closer to 20%.Gin liqueurs tend to be cheaper than full-strength gin (because there is less alcohol duty for the maker to pay).As with full-strength gin, there is a huge range of flavours - lots of fruit flavours and even ‘Unicorn Tears’!There is a debate about whether some of these …