Back to the classics: Beating the gin slump

It’s no secret that the days of meteoric growth are over for gin. Once the darling of hipsters, bartenders and Instagram feeds, a proliferation of flavoured variants and quirky botanicals has reached saturation point, compounded by the general decline in alcohol consumption and wider macroeconomic pressures. Yet the category’s retreat from peak hype, despite what gin’s rivals would claim, is not a story of collapse, but rather one increasingly defined by consolidation, range streamlining and a return to classical styles.