Ah, gin, that delightful spirit flavored with juniper and rich with history. Developed in medieval Holland and the favored liquor of London by the 17th century, gin is now one of the world’s most beloved types of booze, used in cocktails complex and simple alike and oft enjoyed on the rocks or even neat.
Gin is produced quickly and can be purchased at low price points, making it an accessible beverage for people. But there’s an exception. Across the globe, there are bottles of gin that command steep prices due to their rarity and exquisite quality. Here’s a list of 2022’s most expensive gins, that is, if you’re ready to spend thousands of dollars and look overseas for these luxurious bottles.
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Spring Gin Gentleman’s Cut
This Belgian gin is distilled four times, the first three using only the grain bill, and the fourth with 13 botanicals added. A peppery, piney aroma backs up the juniper and other essences, while a 48.8% alcohol by volume makes this a good gin for use in cocktails. And at just over one hundred bucks a bottle, you won’t feel too badly about blending it with mixers.
45 West Distillery Burleigh’s London Dry Gin
The Brits make a fine gin, no doubt about it. Their London Dry Gin is infused with silver birch, dandelion, elderberries, and more, and it’s a delight on the rocks, with lemon, in a martini, and beyond.
Nolet Reserve Dry Gin
Nolet’s is a 10th-generation family-owned Dutch distillery, so you can rest assured they know how to produce a fine gin. This multi-award-winning gin uses juniper and other botanicals, with two, in particular, helping to explain its flavor and price: “To achieve Nolet’s Reserve Gin’s complex, unforgettable flavor and dry, long-lasting final impression, [distiller] Carolus Nolet Sr. handcrafted a recipe highlighting two distinctive botanicals: warm spicy saffron and subtle, delicate verbena.” Note that saffron is the most expensive spice on the planet.
The Cambridge Distillery Watenshi Gin
Only six bottles of this gin are produced per run of distillation, so you’ll have to try and try again if you want to find one. But these bottles are worth the hunt and the price, for they contain a spirit rarely obtained. As the distiller’s site explains: “Revered by gin collectors as the absolute pinnacle of modern spirits production, Watenshi is the “angel’s share” of our Japanese Gin, normally lost to evaporation but preserved using our pioneering distillation processes – which yields just 15ml of spirit per distillation.” This gin, with “notes of sweet citrus and spice, supported by bitter juniper and an incredibly long, complex finish,” is quite literally the portion that no one ever got to taste before.
Jam Jar Gin Morus LXIV
This ridiculously expensive gin sells for £4,000, so based on the current exchange rate of Pounds Sterling to the USD, it might even cost a bit more than the dollar price as of this writing. At 64% ABV, it packs plenty of punch, and the fact that, as the distillery’s site states, it is “distilled from the leaves of a single, ancient Mulberry tree [and as] a single batch of this exquisite cask-strength gin takes more than two years of careful work to produce,” a high price makes sense. Just maybe not quite that high, but of course, you buy this “very bloody marvelous” gin as much for prestige as for flavor.
