Flavor← the wheel

the library

Barrel-aged gin

Spirits & brews· spirit

Barrel-aged gin

What it is

Barrel-aged gin is gin rested in wooden casks, often previously used for whiskey, wine or sherry, after distillation with juniper and other botanicals.

What it tastes like

The house reads it as juniper, vanilla oak, warm spice ✳ — a known palate, not yet a cited measurement. Among its measured molecules: ethyl gallate, sinapaldehyde, coniferaldehyde, syringaldehyde, vanillin.

What goes with it

43 more go with it. See them all in the full library →

Salt and acid

Salt

Salt not measured yet.

Acid

Acid not measured yet.

Unusual pairings

Pairs the library can cite that almost nobody makes.

Every one of its 9 compounds carries a paper the library can cite.

  • gallic acidtasteacidMeasured in 5 of 338 ingredients.cite
    0.5510% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.3355% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins — a 1.6-fold margin, modest for the free acid while its ethyl ester in the same column carries a 5.9-fold one. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'gallic acid' m/z 169.014233 C7H5O5, column G10)
  • vanillinaromaphenolreads as sweetish smell (PubChem)Measured in 12 of 338 ingredients.cite
    0.2040% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.1638% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins (G4) — a 1.25-fold margin. The paper names vanillin first in its list of phenolics 'much more abundant in Koskue', and the per-sample column does not support that for this compound; it is shipped last, as the weakest of the nine, precisely so the discrepancy is visible rather than buried. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'vanillin' m/z 151.040065 C8H7O3, column G10)
  • vanillic acidtasteacidMeasured in 3 of 338 ingredients.cite
    0.2212% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.1356% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins (G4). Named by the Results among the phenolics more abundant in the barrel-aged sample, but a 1.6-fold margin at low intensity — shipped as a weak marker and flagged as such. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'vanillic acid' m/z 167.035003 C8H7O4, column G10)
  • syringaldehydearomaphenolMeasured in 6 of 338 ingredients.cite
    0.9445% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.2372% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins — a 4.0-fold margin. Named by the Results as a typical oak-wood phenolic aldehyde. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'syringaldehyde' m/z 181.050639 C9H9O4, column G10)
  • ethyl gallatearomaesterMeasured in 1 of 338 ingredients.cite
    1.9271% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.3281% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins — a 5.9-fold margin. The paper explains it as the ethanol ester of gallic acid, so it is a compound the maturation makes rather than one the wood simply donates. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'ethyl gallate' m/z 197.045572 C9H9O5, column G10)
  • ferulic acidtasteacidMeasured in 4 of 338 ingredients.cite
    0.8321% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.3195% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins — a 2.6-fold margin. It is the guaiacyl-series acid that sits beside the coniferyl aldehyde in the same column, the pair that oak lignin degradation produces together. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'ferulic acid' m/z 193.050641 C10H9O4, column G10)
  • coniferaldehydearomaphenolMeasured in 3 of 338 ingredients.cite
    0.6188% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.1469% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins — a 4.2-fold margin. Its reduced counterpart coniferyl alcohol runs the other way in the same table (0.0261% in the barrel-aged sample against 0.3397% in Bombay Sapphire), so the aldehyde and not the alcohol is what the barrel contributes. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'coniferyl aldehyde' m/z 177.055716 C10H9O3, column G10)
  • sinapaldehydearomaphenolMeasured in 1 of 338 ingredients.cite
    2.1719% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin against 0.2233% in the highest of the fifteen unaged gins — a 9.7-fold margin, the largest of any phenolic the paper names. The Results group it with syringaldehyde as a phenolic aldehyde derived from oak wood. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1, row 'sinapaldehyde' m/z 207.066280 C11H11O4, column G10)
  • ellagic acidtastephenolMeasured in 2 of 338 ingredients.cite
    6.0029% relative intensity in the barrel-aged gin. Of the fifteen unaged gins in the same table the highest is 0.0201% (G16, itself described in Table 1 as oak barrel-matured) and the other fourteen are 0.0000% — a roughly 300-fold margin over the best of the rest and the single most discriminating compound in the study. The Results describe it as 'highly abundant in Koskue but was completely undetectable in most other gins' and as a polyphenol found in many oak wood species. — Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Supporting Information Table S1 (88 compounds tentatively identified by (-) ESI FT-ICR MS, per sample), row 'ellagic acid' m/z 300.998985 C14H5O8, column G10 (Kyrö Dark Gin / Koskue, the barrel-aged sample))

Sources

  • Dou et al. 2023, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
read it with something