If You Want the Best Gin of 2022, Head to Argentina

If you’re going to drink a gin this year, maybe you should look to … Argentina. Or Lebanon. Or Slovenia.

The all-encompassing Gin Magazine Awards — held virtually on February 24 and featuring the categories the Icons of Gin, World Gin Awards and the Gin Magazine Hall of Fame — included a big win for Bosque, an Argentinian distillery that took home “World’s Best Contemporary Style Gin” for its Alta Montaña release.

Translated, Bosque notes its gins contain botanicals and citrus fruits like “juniper, cardamom, coriander, orange blossom, lemon verbena, grapefruit peel, lemon peel and clove,” with the wild juniper from Patagonia offering up a special profile. For a rough definition, “contemporary gin” is considered a gin that focuses more on other flavors than just the juniper.

Other World Gin Awards winners:

Best classic gin: Awildian Coromandel Dry Gin (New Zealand)
Best compound gin: The Three Brothers Bathtub Gin (Lebanon)
Best flavored gin: Jaffa Cake Gin (England)
Best London Dry gin: Never Never Distilling Co. Triple Juniper Gin Export Strength (Australia)
Best matured gin: Lydén Distillery Cask Gin (Sweden)
Best Old Tom gin: Broken Bones Old Tom Gin (Slovenia)

“We received an incredible number of entries, with around 950 products submitted, and the quality has been outstanding across the board,” as Anita Ujszaszi, awards director of the World Gin Awards, noted.

At the very least, it’s nice to see a spirits category that broadly represents the globe, even if some of the gins seem very difficult to procure here in the U.S.