The garden furniture is under its cover, the clocks go back a week on Sunday, and somewhere at the back of a cupboard your gin is quietly sulking. We have done gin a disservice. We decided, collectively and without much thought, that it belonged to summer: a tall glass, a wedge of lime, a deckchair. All of which is glorious in July and does precisely nothing for a wet Tuesday in late October. So here is the better idea. Gin was never a summer drink. It was a winter one first, and it still has a cold-weather life that most of us have never bothered to meet.

This is not a plea to abandon the gin and tonic. It is a plea to stop letting it speak for the entire spirit. Once the evenings draw in, gin has more to offer than almost anything else on the shelf, and most of it has nothing to do with tonic water.

How Gin Got Filed Under Summer

Blame the gin and tonic. It is a brilliant drink and also something of a tyrant, because it persuaded two generations that gin only works when it is long, cold and poured over a hedge of ice. The G&T is summer in a glass, and we quietly let it define the whole category. Then the branding followed: pastel bottles, pink gins, botanicals that taste of a strawberry lace. All very jolly, all very June.

But gin's actual character runs the other way. Its backbone is juniper, a dark, piney, resinous berry that tastes of forests in December, and it almost always travels in company with the warming end of the spice rack: coriander seed, cassia bark, orange peel, angelica, the odd whisper of cardamom. Read that list back and tell me, honestly, that it sounds like a beach.

The history agrees. Gin descends from genever, the malty Dutch spirit that English soldiers warmed themselves on during cold campaigns in the Low Countries, which is where we got the phrase Dutch courage. This was a drink for the fire and the frost long before anyone thought to introduce it to a cucumber.

The Winter Martini

If you learn one new thing to do with gin this winter, make it a Martini. Not the sweet, neon thing with chocolate or espresso in the name, but the original: gin, a breath of dry vermouth, stirred over ice until it is painfully cold, and served up in a small glass with a twist of lemon or a single olive. It is the most grown-up thing you can do with a spirit, and it is emphatically a cold-weather drink. There is nothing refreshing about a Martini. It is austere, bracing and warming all at once, the liquid equivalent of a very good overcoat.

The gin matters more here than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to hide. You want real juniper spine and clarity. Hepple Gin, made out on the Northumberland moors, is built for exactly this: taut, green and almost cold-feeling, with juniper that genuinely tastes of the hills it came from. If you lean brighter, Tanqueray No. 10 puts whole fresh grapefruit and orange through the still and comes out singing, which makes for a Martini with a little winter sunlight in it. Stir, do not shake, unless you actively enjoy a cloudy, watered-down drink.

The Gin That Drinks Like Whisky

Here is the part nobody tells you. Some gin spends time in a barrel, and when it does, it more or less stops behaving like gin. These rested and golden gins pick up colour, vanilla and a soft oak warmth from the wood, which turns the juniper from something sharp into something rounded and autumnal. Pour one into a tumbler over a single large cube, or neat if you are feeling bold, and it drinks far closer to a light whisky than to anything you would ever drown in tonic.

Where whisky needs years, a golden gin gets there in months. Palmaráe Golden Gin is the easiest way to see what I mean: a French-influenced golden gin, honeyed and softly spiced, that belongs beside a fire rather than in a highball. Seventy One takes the idea further, resting the spirit for seventy-one nights across three kinds of cask until it has the amber glow and the quiet confidence of a dram. Treat either the way you would a good whisky. Small glass, no rush, perhaps a few drops of water to open it up.

Warm It Up Properly

When the weather turns genuinely grim, gin takes to heat beautifully. A gin hot toddy is a revelation and a mild heresy in equal measure: a good measure of gin, hot water, honey, lemon and a clove-studded slice of orange. It keeps all the botanical lift of the spirit, where the whisky version goes heavy and brooding. If you still want bubbles, simply dress your G&T for the season instead of retiring it. Swap the lime for a wide slice of orange, add a cinnamon stick and a star anise, reach for something aromatic and Mediterranean such as Alkkemist, and the very same drink suddenly smells of December.

For the mornings after, there is the Red Snapper, the gin cousin of the Bloody Mary, which does for a cold Sunday what no Bellini ever could. Gin, tomato, lemon, a serious amount of spice, and the juniper cutting through the whole savoury business like a cold draught under a warm door. For a gin with the aromatic backbone to stand up to all that, Alkkemist earns its place.

If you keep only two gins between now and spring, let them be two different animals: one bright and bladed for Martinis, one golden and glowing for the nights you want something to sip.

The Negroni Never Left

And if all of that sounds like effort, there is the drink that has been quietly flying the flag for winter gin the entire time. The Negroni is one part gin, one part Campari, one part sweet vermouth, stirred over ice with an orange peel, and it is bitter, warming and completely impervious to the season. A good sweet vermouth does much of the heavy lifting, which is why a bottle of Carpano Antica Formula, all vanilla, dried fruit and faint bitterness, is one of the better things you can keep in the house from now until the clocks go forward again. The Negroni was never a summer drink pretending to be serious. It was always serious.

What to Actually Keep In

You do not need a shelf heaving with bottles. You need two gins and a plan. Keep one bright, juniper-forward gin for Martinis and the occasional dressed-up G&T, and keep one rested or golden gin to sip slowly when you want something that behaves like a whisky without the weight of one. Add a single bottle of good vermouth, sweet or dry depending on your leanings, and you can make very nearly everything above without putting your coat on.

So before you shove the gin to the back of the cupboard until May, pour yourself a Martini, or a golden gin over one fat cube, and sit somewhere warm. The clocks go back on the 25th, the evenings turn long and dark and perfect for exactly this, and gin has been waiting for the cold all year. The least we can do is let it in.