(Plus a teenage tale about the night that made me hate gin for over a decade.)

In the summer of 1995, a group of friends and I had a sleepover. There were seven of us and we were all roughly 15 years old. My buddy’s parents were out of town, so of course we chose his house for the event. We ordered greasy pepperoni pizza from Dominos and several six-packs of Pepsi.

“You know what would be fun,” someone said. “If we took a little bit of booze from you parent’s liquor cabinet and put it in the Pespi!”

Having never drank before, we all thought that was a grand idea—how adult! How renegade! What could go wrong…

My buddy’s parents had a locked liquor cabinet (presumably for the good stuff), but below it was an open shelf of cheap white liquors and a couple brown ones—we didn’t know the difference. We splashed untold ounces of bourbon, tequila, gin, and vodka into our Pepsi cans, swirled them (because that’s what you did, right? With wine glasses?), and drank.

After about thirty minutes of teenage bartending, my buddy declared we’d taken enough; he didn’t want his parents to notice what we’d done. Then my other buddy piped up, “My parents have a huge liquor cabinet. We could walk over to my house and get more.”

“But it’s almost midnight,” I said. “Your folks will be asleep. How are you going to sneak into your house and then out with a bunch of heavy glass bottles?”

“I’ve got it covered,” he said. “I have a great idea.”

So off we went, drunk and giggling through a quiet suburban neighborhood, shushing each other and ducking behind bushes every time a car appeared until we got to our other buddy’s house. We stood across the street and watched as he walked through his back fence, then climbed up a trellised wall to the second story, and through an open window. Roughly ten minutes later, we watched him scramble back down, carrying a plastic gallon milk jug that was three-quarters full and sloshing with hazy liquid.

He put the jug to his mouth a swigged as he approached us.

“It’s mostly different types of gin, but I added some other stuff to cut the taste!”

There was definitely Kahlua in it. Genius.

Back at our boozy home-base, we took turns swigging from the jug, sucking on orange slices (because that’s what you do right? Chase the shot with citrus?), and scarfing down cold, grease-congealed pizza to “absorb the alcohol.”

Now, despite this being a co-ed sleepover, we were all nerdy, undeveloped surfer groms living that pre-internet life. We were not like students from Euphoria High. So instead of making out and getting sexy, we went into the garage, put on the latest Ween CD, and watched our friend Dan go though trash bags of old clothes destined for Goodwill and loudly proclaim, “Anything I touch, I wear!” Before we knew it, he was doing cartwheels in the driveway wearing wool socks on his hands, a beanie, and a short black dress with no underwear on.

The night gets blurrier from there, but what I do remember is that right about the time the milk jug of too-many-gins started to wane, so did my constitution. I wound up wretching myself hoarse behind the house, head literally in a gutter, vomiting up Pepsi-scented pepperoni and gin until my eyes wept, my nose burned, and there was nothing left in my stomach but burning regret. I didn’t drink again until my early twenties, and I still feel queasy around Pepsi.

I was offered liquor many times in the years following that night, but I always said no, especially if it was gin. The smell alone triggered instant nausea.

Eventually, I learned to love dark beer, rum and tiki drinks, followed by scotch (a weird leap, I know). But it wasn’t until I moved to Portland, OR in my early 30s that I started to experiment with gin again, primarily in the form of Negronis. You see, in 2013, Portland’s Imbibe Magazine founded Negroni Week, an event in which bars across the city would make variations of the classic cocktail and donate proceeds to charity.

I was doing a lot of writing and fact-checking for Portland Monthly at the time, so the event kept coming across my desk. Loads of bars I liked were participating, so I figured why not? It’s for a good cause.

My first Negroni Week crawl was eye-opening. Like people who’ve only known Cuervo and then someone gives them Forteleza, I suddenly realized that gin could be delicious! Ten Negroni Weeks later and I’m still geeked when I get to learn about or try new gins. Almost as much as Scotch! (Almost.)

I love that gin is a relatively easy spirit to make, but can incorporate so much terroir. Using local botanicals, teas, citrus, herbs, and spices can imbue each one with a unique sense of place, something I don’t think gin is given as much credit for the way scotch and tequila are. So here’s a rundown of my favorite bottles; some are hard to find, but consider it a reason to add a distillery to your next travel itinerary. Supporting local businesses is always a good cause, just like Negroni Week.

The Gins

Noosa Barrel Aged Gin

Located in Queensland, Australia and distilled at Noosa Heads Distillery, Noosa Barrel Aged Gin is a small-batch bottling of sun-coast gold. Their botanicals include juniper, green tea, honeydew, lemon peel, cassia, angelica, lavender, coriander, and lemon grass. The spirit is then aged for six months in new oak and ex-shiraz barrels, yielding a bright caramel color, zesty citrus on the nose, and allspicey eggnog notes that build with every sip. It’s Christmas in a cup.

In this recipe, I’m swapping London Dry Gin for the Barrel Aged Noosa because I think the flavors play well with the chai-infused vermouth. This cocktail is from Alicia Perry of Lou Lou's Jungle Room, located inside San Diego’s newest luxury, NOLA-inspired hotel, the Lafayette Hotel & Club. (Original recipe first printed in Imbibe Magazine.)

**Masala Chai Negroni**
1 oz. Noosa Barrel Aged Gin (or London Dry Gin if you aren’t in AUS)
1 oz. Campari
1 oz. Masala chai-infused Cocchi Vermouth Di Torino*
Combine all ingredients in a glass over ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over a BFC. Express an orange peel and garnish.
*For every 750ml of Cocchi Vermouth Di Torino, steep three teabags of masala chai for roughly 15 minutes. (I only steeped one teabag into 4 oz of vermouth because I didn’t need a whole bottle of it, just enough to make a few cocktails to share.)

Roku Gin

Roku Gin by Suntory celebrates each of Japan’s four seasons by blending six botanicals picked at their peak. Sakura flower, sakura leaf, yuzu peel, Sencha green tea, Gyokuro tea (a refined green tea), and sanshō pepper combine to create a meticulously balanced flavor that represents the richness of Japan’s natural bounty and the concept of “shun,” which is the appreciation of seasonal ingredients used at the pinnacle of freshness or when perfectly ripe.

Paired with Mancino Sakura Vermouth, the Roku Gin Negroni presents bright floral tones and crisp citrus notes, followed by a subtle spiciness, courtesy of the sanshō pepper. (Recipe by Roku Gin)

**Roku Negroni**
1.5 oz Roku Japanese Gin
1 oz Mancino Sakura Vermouth
1 oz Campari liqueur
Combine all ingredients in a glass over ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over a BFC. Garnish with an orange twist.

Weavers Irish Gin

I love a spirit with a sense of place, and few gins do that better than Weavers Irish Gin. For over 300 years, linen was Ireland’s largest industry, so Weavers named their gin to honor the people who worked the linen and flax mills. For generations, Irish weavers made the world’s finest linen, some of which even coated the wings of the first functional airplanes, including the Royal Flying Corps in World War One.

It’s a rich history woven into a beautiful spirit that incorporates juniper, flax, jasmine, Angelica root, elderflower, fresh lime, rowan berries, and pink peppercorn. This dry gin bursts with grapefruit and lavender notes on the nose, juniper, pear, and elderflower on the palate, and finishes with earthy hints of flax, almond, and clove. It’s a dram as intricate as a tapestry.

For Negroni Week, I’m playing up the elderflower element by making a Comte de Sureau, which subs elderflower liquor for sweet vermouth.

**Comte de Sureau**
1.5 oz Weavers gin
Scant ounce elderflower liqueur
1/4 oz Campari or Strucchi red bitter liqueur
Combine all ingredients in a glass over ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over a BFC. Garnish with orange and lemon twists.

Dingle Original Gin

Another Irish gin that incorporates local botanicals to give their spirit a terroir-like experience is Dingle Original Gin. Located on the Ring of Kerry in southwest Ireland, Dingle Distillery was a highlight of my visit to the region. During my tour, the guide said the owners wanted to make whiskey, but aging whiskey takes time and they needed money to keep the distillery open—so they made gin too. They foraged local botanicals like rowan berry from native mountain ash trees, fuchsia, bog myrtle, hawthorn, and heather, which they say creates a “taste of the Kerry landscape.”

It’s a unique formula only used by Dingle Distilling; they even cut it with water from their well, located 240 feet below the distillery. Dingle Gin received the award for World’s Best London Dry Gin and the overall award for World’s Best Gin 2019. Dingle’s cocktail magicians suggest an effervescent take on the Negroni, something as bright and rosy as a County Kerry sunset.

**Rosie Negroni**
1 oz Dingle Original Gin
1 oz Rosé Vermouth
1 oz Campari
Rosé Prosecco
Add Dingle Original Gin, Rosé Vermouth and Campari to a rocks glass full of ice. Stir until chilled then top with Prosecco. Garnish with an orange wedge.

Seven Caves

No gin round-up would be complete without a local-to-me gin. Founded in 2016 by Geoff Longenecker, Seven Caves’ spirits are made in-house at their distillery located in Miramar, CA (where Top Gun was filmed).

They make “ludicrously small” batch spirits that are “ridiculously delicious.” My favorite right now is their tropical gin distilled with pineapple, passionfruit, juniper, and local citrus. It makes for a great Saturn cocktail, but also lends itself well to a tiki-esque Negroni.

Here, I’m swapping Beefeater Gin for Seven Caves Tropical Gin to make the Negroni Hawaiiana by Jen Ackrill of the Kaimana Beach Hotel's Hau Tree Restaurant in Waikiki. (Original recipe first appeared Imbibe Magazine )

**Negroni Hawaiiana**
1 oz POG (passion-orange-guava juice)
3/4 oz. Seven Caves Tropical Gin
3/4 oz. Cocchi Vermouth Di Torino
1/2 oz. Orgeat
1/2 oz. Fresh lime juice
1/4 oz. Campari
Combine ingredients in a shaker with 1/8 cup of crushed ice and shake. Pour into a double Old Fashioned glass and top with more crushed ice. Garnish with a pineapple wedge and fronds.

Ki No Tea

Japanese gin is something of a mystery to me, having had very little experience with it beyond Nikka’s Coffey Still offering. But my friend recently came back from Japan toting this beautiful bottle of Ki No Tea dry gin from Kyoto Distillery.

According to the distiller, Ki No Tea is created in collaboration with tea-grower and blender Hori-Shichimeien, which was founded in the Meiji era in 1879 in the famous Uji region south of Kyoto. In addition to tencha and gyokuro green teas, they also use yuzu, lemon, juniper berry, orris, and akamatsu (Japanese red pine).

The flavors are immense yet delicate. It’s a sipping gin for me, but the yuzu notes are begging to be made into a yuzu Negroni. This one’s from Batched and Bottled Cocktails by Noel and Max Venning, but I’m subbing the London dry gin for Ki No Tea dry gin, and reducing the ingredients for a single cocktail.

Negroni Week Gin Round-Up