What does distilled gin mean on a label?

Category 21 of Regulation (EU) 2019/787 defines distilled gin as a juniper-flavoured spirit made by distilling alcohol of at least 96% vol with juniper berries.

Besides the juniper berry, other natural botanicals may go into the still, as long as the taste of juniper predominates. The regulation also allows the distillate to be mixed afterwards with ethyl alcohol of the same composition, purity and strength. The lower limit for the alcohol content is 37.5% vol.

Ordinary gin may be flavoured with flavouring substances or flavouring preparations without being redistilled; distilled gin must undergo that distillation.

Both categories are in the same annex and have the same lower limit of 37.5% vol. The difference lies in the method, not the strength. If a label says only gin, nothing can be inferred about how it was made; if it says distilled gin, the bottle has been redistilled with botanicals.

Compound gin is made by adding juniper and other flavourings to neutral alcohol without redistillation, and therefore falls under category 20.

The method is old. In the Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, David Wondrich describes how compound gin was made by flavouring alcohol with juniper and other botanicals, while rectifiers redistilled the raw distillate once or twice with their own mixture of botanicals. That second route now appears in the law as distilled gin.

London gin is a stricter form of distilled gin: the flavour comes exclusively from the distillation, no colouring is added and at most 0.1 gram of sweetener per litre is allowed.

Every London gin is therefore distilled gin, but not every distilled gin meets the requirements of London gin. The name says nothing about the place of production; it appears in Annex I as category 22 and is tied to the method of preparation, not to the city.

Distilled gin is a permitted designation and not a mandatory one, so a producer may also simply call a redistilled gin gin or London gin.

Anyone who meets all the requirements of category 22 can put London gin on the bottle. Anyone who redistils but, for example, adds more sweetness or uses colour can fall back on distilled gin. And anyone who only puts gin on the label leaves open how the flavour got into the bottle. Ask in the shop if you want to know.