Waragi is Gin?

I know a few things about gin. It is probably one of my favourite spirit. When I went to Belgium in my twenties, one of the things that I brought home was a bottle of henever. The Belgian precursor to gin. It was flavoured with juniper which is where jenever got is name. Of course, from the latin nam of juniper. 

So, when I heard about this Ugandan spirit that was drank straight at a slightly lower percentage than traditional gins, I was skeptical. I was pretty sure that it wasn't flavoured with juniper berries but I was intrigued by what was on the bottles. Pineapple and coconut. 

The coconut flavour reminded me of the coconut palm wine called toddy. A friend from India told me about this wine that they would make. Sometimes they would distill it. After the process, they call it gin. BTW, this is where we get the word toddy. It somehow became a hot toddy. 

Well, maybe that explains it. There is a historical connection between moonshine and gin. There was a gin craze where folks made bathtub gin and it didn't necessarily need juniper. It was a rough and ready way of making booze. This particular process was a hit in Victorian England. Of course, with the expansion of empire, India makes sense. Uganda also had to gain independence from the United Kingdom as well. I guess that solves that first part. 

Now, where it gets weird for me is that the definition of gin and the history still talks about juniper as being the deciding factor. Gin is flavoured vodka. But somehow this legal definition is probably only in reference to Anglo nations. I am not sure that I want to step into that nest. However, India and Uganda, do talk about these beverages as gin in the sense of illicit moonshining. 

In Uganda's case, Wiki talks about the high alcohol consumption and the eventual government sanctioned production of this gin. They passed an act aimed at keeping British gin out and protecting the local market. 

I was told that this is something of a regular drink to drink straight. The bottles I tasted were in 250mL containers at 37.5%. It could run hot in the alcohol. I tried them. They are flavourful and smooth. The pineapple one tastes like pineapple and not flavouring. If it is made from banana and millet where it is fermented and then distilled, that would make a lot of sense. It is a soft alcohol burn that tastes great on its own. Sure, you could mix it. It would make sense to add tropical flavours and citrus. You don't need to dumb it down or hide anything. It was seriously a great drink.

The coconut one tastes something like I would imagine toddy to taste like, except I was told by the person I worked with that toddy burned. This had none of that. It tasted like a more intense and refined coconut water. No fake flavourings. Another one that could just be drank like that. 

I can imagine that the 250mL would be something to grab and drink. It seems reasonable and doable. I have tried several exotic alcoholic beverages over my life that we don't see here. Some of them I like and many I do not. Every now and then, there is one that makes me wish we had it here. This is one of those.