Behind Bombay's 77% gin mixup
An unsatisfied customer in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., singlehandedly tipped off the liquor sales industry to a batch of wildly potent gin circulating in Canada, forcing a recall of 6,000 bottles of Bombay Sapphire London Dry Gin across seven provinces, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario said.
“A regular connoisseur of Bombay Sapphire gin realized that the taste profile was off,” a Bombay spokesperson said Thursday.
And no wonder, since the LCBO's quality assurance lab found the gin had 77 per cent alcohol content — nearly double the 40 per cent advertised on the bottle.
The lab's finding led to a recall of a single “lot” the 1.14L bottles Bombay Sapphire (1,000 cases with six
OF COURSE IT’S GOING TO GET PEOPLE DRUNK — IF THEY’RE ABLE TO TOLERATE DRINKING IT.
bottles per case) distributed across Ontario, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Manitoba, Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan, according to Bacardi Ltd., which owns Bombay.
The over proof gin “inadvertently” entered the bottling line at a third-party bottling plant in the United Kingdom when “they were switching from one bottling tank to another bottling tank,” Bacardi spokeswoman Amy Federman said in an email.
The problem gin was used in the bottling line for no more than 45 minutes, “a short period of time,” she said. Bacardi expects only “a few” of the 1,000 recalled cases actually contain bottles with 77 per cent alcohol. The batch was shipped to Canada sometime late last year, she said.
“Remember, the product isn't unsafe,” Federman said, “it just was recalled because the label says 40 per cent and it didn't in fact contain 40 per cent.... There's much higher proof alcohol out there that people drink and buy everyday — but it's labelled properly.”
“If it's going to be drunk in a guzzle, it's very dangerous,” said Larry Grupp, an associate professor at the University of Toronto's pharmacology and toxicology department.
"Of course it's going to get people drunk — if they're able to tolerate drinking it.
“It's just too much alcohol.... You're probably going to be sleepy or worse.”
One ounce of gin with 77 per cent alcohol content is basically two drinks in one — accelerating the buildup of alcohol in the blood, making it easier to reach a dangerous blood-alcohol content.