The humble orange is quite a celebrity in the spirits world. There are spirits and liqueurs made out of oranges, and it is an essential ingredient in numerous classic and modern cocktails.
Here at Wholly Spirits, we have lots of respect for the orange. And because it’s Chinese New Year right now, and the ‘kam’, or mandarin orange is such a quintessential part of the celebrations, we’ve also come up with a orange-themed promotion just for this festive season, featuring six unique gins with orange botanicals. (We’ll get to that later)
So, first of all, let’s talk about…
Orange botanicals in gins
As we’ve mentioned before in our previous blog post ‘What Makes A Gin A Gin’, a gin can basically have any number of botanicals from any source, as long as it still has juniper in it. So it’s no surprise that oranges would make an appearance in the botanicals lists of gins as well.
For example, let’s take a look at the five gins that are part of our CNY orange promotion:
Porter’s Modern Classic Gin: Made by bartenders for bartenders, the founders built their own vacuum still so they could distill at a lower temperature and thus bring forth the lighter, more volatile flavours of the 12 botanicals, which includes a rare citrus called the Buddha’s Hand, and, yes, orange peel. Try it with East Imperial Burma Tonic, which comes with it in our Wholly Spirits gift box!
Gin Mare: A Spanish gin has 45 botanicals, also including peels of sweet oranges from Seville and bitter oranges from Valencia, and it is said that the distillery goes through about 200kg of orange peel EVERY YEAR.
Siderit Dry Gin: Another Spanish gin, but made in the style of a London Dry Gin and produced in Cantabria, Spain by Destileria Siderit. Made from rye and 12 botanicals, which includes bitter orange peel and mandarin peel.
Elephant Navy Strength Gin: This ‘Elephant Strength’ gin doubles up on the botanicals, but pays closer attention to African buchu, sweet orange peel and herbaceous mountain pine. The result is a gentle giant , an elephantian powerhouse of a gin.
No.3 London Dry Gin: A classic London Dry, No 3 uses just six very classic botanicals, juniper, orange and grapefruit peel, angelica, coriander and cardamom for a all-rounder gin that is great in a G&T,
Triple sec
Triple sec is an essential ingredient in classics cocktails like the Margarita, Sidecar and Cosmopolitan. But what exactly is a triple sec?
Triple sec are basically orange liqueurs, of which arguably the most famous being Cointreau. In fact, it’s been said that the term ‘triple sec’ was coined by Cointreau, referring to it being three times more concentrated in essentials oils of orange than other orange liqueurs, and having three times more intense orange aromas. But what about the word sec? Well, ‘sec’ means dry, or less sugar.
Others include Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao, Grand Marnier, and many more. Most liqueur-making companies such as Giffard also have their own versions of triple sec.
Orange Bitters
You’ve probably heard of aromatic bitters, which are the most common and most used bitters, but did you know that the second most used type of bitters are orange bitters?
What are orange bitters? Well, it’s pretty much bitters that also contain oranges, especially Seville Orange. Scrappy’s Bitters, for example, have two orange bitters on their list, the regular Scrappy’s Orange Bitters and the other, Seville Orange Bitters.
Other uses for oranges
Other uses for oranges in bars include using the juice as a mixer (classics like the Tequila Sunrise, Screwdriver and Harvey Wallbanger), as a garnish, and spraying orange zest to give a drink a more orange-y aroma.