Old Tom Gin (or Tom Gin or Old Tom) is a lightly sweetened Gin popular in 18th-century England that now is rarely available. It is slightly sweeter than London Dry, but slightly drier than Dutch/Holland Gin/Jenever, and is thus sometimes called The Missing Link.[1]
The name Old Tom Gin purportedly came from wooden plaques shaped like a black cat (an "Old Tom") mounted on the outside wall of some pubs above a public walkway in the 18th century England. Owing to a scandalous news report of a tragedy involving a murdered family, gin was outlawed and went underground, changing from a cloudy liquid to its modern clear form so as to appear like water. After a pedestrian deposited a penny in the cat's mouth, they would place their lips around a small tube between the cat's paws. From the tube would come a shot of Gin, poured by the bartender inside the pub.[2]
Old Tom Gin was formerly made under license by a variety of distillers around the world; however one was recently relaunched by Hayman's distillery based on an original recipe.[3] Since then a number of other companies have followed suit such as, Both's, Secret Treasures, Jensens, Ransom and even The Dorchester Hotel. [4]The first written record of Old Tom Gin being used in the Tom Collins cocktail was the 1891 book, The Flowing Bowl: When and What to Drink.[5]