Style: Navy Strength Gin

In order to ensure that purveyors of spirits were selling high quality products, an apocryphal tale suggests that the British Royal Navy would measure a spirits’ strength by igniting it. So when the spirits and gunpowder (stored in the same cargo hold) were accidentally spilled upon one another, the gunpowder was still usable (to say nothing of the spirit, which was presumably no longer drinkable)

Anyway, the term “Navy Strength Gin” is a 1990s marketing creation to sell spirits which meet 100° UK Proof (114 modern proof), and are 57.1% ABV. The romantic and evocative term has stuck and today, high proof gins are often bottled at 57.1 ABV, though in our reviews we consider anything in this range or higher to be Navy Strength.

Navy Strength Gins are fantastic for cocktails as they maintain their gin character even in small quantities.

Tarquin’s The Seadog

65 Miles Gin

James Bay Distillers Navy Strength Gin

Juniper Freak Gin (2018)

V.J.O.P. Gin

Aged Perry’s Tot Gin

Common Gin

Chapter One Navy Strength Gin

Bathtub Gin Palo Cortado Cask-Aged Navy Strength Gin

Spirit of Hven Navy Strength Gin

Green Hat Navy Strength

Conniption Navy Strength Gin

The West Winds Gin— The Broadside

Genius Gin Navy Strength

Leopold’s Navy Strength Gin

Finsbury Gin 60%

Hernö Navy Strength Gin

Professor Cornelius Ampleforth’s Navy Strength Bathtub Gin