Old Tom gin
Also called Old Tom, Tom gin
The lightly sweetened gin of 18th and 19th century Britain, softer and rounder than London dry. It bridges genever and modern gin and is the historically correct choice for a Tom Collins or a Martinez. Revived in recent years after nearly vanishing.
- juniper
- soft citrus
- licorice
- light sugar
- malty roundness
- gentle spice
Origin
Old Tom was the dominant style of the 18th and early 19th centuries, when pot still spirit was coarse and distillers masked it with lemon, aniseed, liquorice and later beet sugar. The cat in a vat story is a legend; the name is more plausibly tied to the compounder Thomas Chamberlain and to Boord & Son's tomcat label, defended in court in 1903. Dry gin took over in the late 1800s, and surviving Old Toms with two to six percent sugar were mostly exported until the modern revival.
Common uses
- Tom Collins
- Martinez
- a softer Martini
- Gin Fizz
- Ramos Gin Fizz
Sources
- Old Tom gin, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Gin: legal definitions, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11