Moody Orange – JIN7 No. 01

There are not a lot of gins which make me crave them just by looking at the bottle. However, the JIN7 No. 01 gin from Japan is one of them. The bottle is just beautiful and when you check out the details it even gets better. The No. 01 uses a very rare bitter orange variety, the Hetsuke Daidai. However, it was not exactly easy to use the JIN7 in a cocktail.

The JIN7 comes from the Oyama Jinshichi Shoten, a distillery which produces Imo Shochus since 1875. The base for the No. 01 gin forms a black Koji Shochu. To this base six botanicals are added, especially the Hetsuka Daidai, juniper, Chirancha green tea, rosemary, rose geranium and Aomomiji, Japanese green maple. Only 3500 to 4000 bottles with an ABV of 47 % are bottled once a year.

A lot of umami notes

One thing you can say for sure about the JIN No. 01 is that it is quite different than regular gins. There are a lot of bitter orange notes and the flavour clearly reminds me of a Shochu. I like the complex combination of flavours and its unusual taste. However, the unique taste also means that you have to take more care when mixing drink with it. For instance, when making a Gin & Tonic my first instinct was to combine it with the Fentiman’s Oriental Yuzu Tonic. While the taste was interesting, the flavours clashed a bit. Ilka from Ginza Berlin recommends using Thomas Henry or Schwarzwald Sprudel Tonic Water with the JIN No. 01.

Hard work

Of course, not every cocktail idea works at the first try. However, most of the time I at least get the direction right and with a bit of fine tuning the resulting drink is quite drinkable. This was not the case with the JIN7. My first try of combining it with a white tea and mixing a kind of sour resulted in a somewhat mediocre cocktail. So, it took quite a while before the right idea came along. Rather than trying to contrast the bitter orange flavour of the No. 01 Gin, I fully embraced it. This is why I the finished drink uses Italian bitter orange lemonade and Mancino Chinato.

The drink features quite some bitter orange notes, but the Mancino Chinato keeps all the different flavours together. You still can taste the shochu and black Koji flavour from the gin, but they are well integrated. Although it is more on the bitter side, the sweetness from the vermouth and the Chinotto balance out the drink. Contrary to my first try, I am very pleased with this cocktail!

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The Gin was provided by Ginza Berlin and the Mancino Chinato by Perola.