Nichol, Tom (1955–), the master distiller at Tanqueray gin from 2006 until his retirement in 2015, is an important figure in the twenty-first-century revival of gin—a passionate, even irascible advocate for the idea that large-scale distilling does not automatically mean compromised quality. Nichol was born in Tullibody, Scotland, not far from the Cambus Distillery where his father worked. Nichol joined Cambus in 1973, and by 1979 had become a distillery supervisor. When Cambus closed in 1993, he joined the Cameronbridge Distillery in Fife, Scotland (originally the Haig Distillery), producing liquid carbon dioxide and moving into grain whisky and neutral grain spirit distillation in 1996. See whisky, grain; and neutral spirits. In 2005 he joined the white spirits team making gin and vodka there and within a year became Tanqueray’s master distiller. See master distiller. During his time, Nichol was credited with developing, recreating, or maintaining the consistent style of a range of gins under the Tanqueray brand name, at first the traditional London Dry and the citrusy No. Ten (created in 2000). While master distiller there, he developed the lime-focused Rangpur (introduced in 2007), oversaw a revival of the lighter Malacca based on an original Tanqueray recipe in 2013, and produced the sweetened Old Tom, also based on Tanqueray’s original recipe, in 2014. His Bloomsbury, based on a ca. 1880 recipe that includes winter savory and credited to Charles Waugh Tanqueray, son of founder Charles Tanqueray, was released in limited quantity in 2015. Post-Tanqueray, Nichol became a consulting distiller, with two gins released in late 2015, both to considerable acclaim—Midwestern Dry Gin from the J. Rieger Distillery in Kansas City, Missouri, and Christopher Wren from England’s City of London Distillery.
London dry gin; Old Tom gin; Tanqueray Gordon & Co.; and Gordon’s.By: Jack Robertiello