Gin sin: How ‘Drinkflation’ took the kick out of your weekend martini

Some months ago, I wrote a piece about the “Hall of Shame” occupied by spirits brands who, over the years, have changed formulations of recipes by adjusting either ingredients and/or alcoholic strength. It’s a sorry list, including names as familiar (and popular) as Gordon’s Gin, Jack Daniels, Maker’s Mark, Pimm’s, Sailor Jerry, and Southern Comfort.

In many cases, these changes went unannounced in the hope (often realised) that brand-loyal consumers simply wouldn’t notice the difference. I ended with these words of warning: “You can be sure that as you read this someone, somewhere, is trying to f*** with one of your favourite spirit brands. Likely as not they’ll try and do it without telling you this time.”

Little did I know that the next brand in the frame would be the UK version of Tanqueray London Dry Gin – quite possibly one of the best gins in the world. And my favourite. And no one told me.

Tanqueray London Dry is available in a number of different strengths around the world, ranging from 40 per cent to 47.3 per cent ABV. Until just a few weeks ago, for drinkers in the UK, it was bottled at 43.1 per cent.

Not only does it make a great gin and tonic, Tanqueray London Dry is also the complete martini gin. Rectified with only four botanicals, its austere dry character and slight citrus notes (from coriander, not lemon peel) make it perfect in your Nick and Nora. But the strength of your gin is critical to the delivery of your martini – strength delivers viscosity, texture and the visceral kick of that first ice-cold sip. Forty per cent ABV just doesn’t cut it.

But look closely at the label of that bottle of Tanqueray London Dry on the supermarket shelf in front of you today and you might notice that, as if by a magician’s unseen sleight of hand, 43.1 per cent has become 41.3 per cent. To be honest, with eyesight like mine it’s pretty hard to spot – after all, all the right numbers seem to be there, but perhaps, to quote Eric Morecambe, “not necessarily in the right order”. Now you see it – now you don’t.

When I asked Diageo (my former employer) why they had made the change, the answer I got was “To align Tanqueray London Dry with the Tanqueray non-classic gin range (Tanqueray Blackcurrant Royale, Tanqueray Rangpur Lime, Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla)”, which seems like an extreme case of the tail wagging the dog.

As far as I can discover there’s been no consumer-facing public announcement about the reduction, and many of the people I know in the trade were unaware. The MD of one large Scottish retailer told me the first his people knew about it was when cases arrived in their warehouse marked “new strength”.

On the first day of Wimbledon, as the Israeli army launched airstrikes against camps in the West Bank and extreme weather descended on North America and southern Europe, an eagle-eyed Daily Mail reader – I would guess a Gordon’s drinker – might have noticed the headline “Why your G&T could soon lose a little of its kick...”

The article went on to say, “the Daily Mail has learned that one leading brand, Tanqueray London Dry Gin, has cut the alcohol ABV from 43.1 per cent to 41.3 per cent”. This placed the strength reduction within the context of forthcoming spirits duty increases – a “hammer blow” for the public and producers, said Diageo – and as yet another example of the now rampant trend of “shrinkflation”. This puts Diageo firmly in the same boat as what Martin Vander Weyer described recently in The Spectator as “fat-cat brewers currently seeking to preserve sales and profits by lowering the alcohol content in their beers”. Drinkflation.

Does the 1.5 per cent really matter? I asked for a comment on taste from Diageo’s gin distillers (also responsible for Gordon’s Gin) but sadly none was forthcoming. It’s a shame that we hear so little from them given that they are probably the most expert gin distillers in the world producing the best gins, and instead must put up with the so-called expertise of new “artisan” distillers, who probably learnt to distil from the back of a breakfast cereal packet, but that’s big corporations for you.

I’ve nosed and tasted the two side by side and have concluded that it’s very hard to pull them apart. I got the same answer from Alessandro Palazzi of Dukes Bar in London, who had tasted them with his team. Tanqueray London Dry, he told me, “is one of my favourite drinks, perfect for a classic martini, and few customers are going to be able to notice any difference in taste in an ice-cold cocktail”. But, he added, not to be told of any change was “very naughty, and sadly not surprising”.

And there’s the rub. It’s the not being told. The sleight of hand. The somewhat contemptuous assumption that most drinkers won’t even notice the change on the label, or in the taste.

At the height of the furore over the Gordon’s strength reduction (from 40 per cent to 37 per cent ABV) in 1993, Walter Ellis bemoaned in The Times that, ‘‘The lesson that the average British palette is as refined as diesel fuel, is one that manufacturers have no doubt taken to heart.’’

The other lesson was probably that a reduction of 3 per cent in ABV was too much to hide, while 1.5 per cent, well, you could probably get away with it, particularly if you didn’t tell anyone.

Personally, I wouldn’t have minded paying more for my gin if it meant it staying at 43.1 per cent ABV. I doubt the average Tanqueray London Dry drinker is that price-sensitive, and anyway, the brand is regularly discounted in the UK. And it would still be much more affordable than many of the new-to-world brands of very inferior quality.

I’m sure my doctor thinks it’s better for me but, like most consumers, I like what I like and I don’t appreciate people messing with my brand behind my back. And why, I wonder, was Tanqueray London Dry of all brands chosen for the chop, when its owners have so many other brands to fool around with?

So much for the bond of trust that’s supposed to exist between brand and consumer. A bond broken at a stroke. My friend Angus Winchester, formerly (and for many years) global brand ambassador for Tanqueray, sounded heartbroken when he spoke to me about it. “This” he wrote on Twitter/X, “makes me mad and sad.” Me too, Angus.