Export Data Suggests the US Is Gaining a Taste for UK Gin

A few years ago, while waiting for a flight home from London, a friend and I decided to sample some gin at Gatwick Airport. Our reasoning? We were in England, and that seemed like the right place to get a quick education in this particular spirit. Our instincts were correct — the gin was delicious. And if recent economic data is any indication, we were slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to Americans embracing gin from the U.K.

The UK’s Food and Drink Federation recently released data on imports and exports for the first half of 2025 — and it sure looks like Americans are picking up more of a taste for imported gin. Placing ninth on the Federation’s list of top 10 exports for the first six months of 2025 was gin, with the volume shipped up 6.3% from a comparable period in 2024. The value of this gin was also up significantly from the same period last year — specifically, by 17.6%.

That’s only part of the story, however. The largest food or drink exported from the U.K. during this period was whisky, and the £2.5 billion (equivalent to $3.3 billion) was a significantly larger amount than the runner-up, salmon. The change in value for whisky originating in the U.K. from last year to this year was far smaller, however: just 1.0%. And the total volume actually dropped from 2024 to 2025 by 3.1%.

When you look at trade between the U.K. and the U.S., the differing paths of gin and whisky become even more pronounced. In the first half of 2025, whisky exports to the U.S. dropped in value by 3.9% and in volume by 3.4%. By comparison, gin exports rose by 23.8% in value and 7.1% in volume.

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As Nicola Carruthers at The Spirits Business pointed out, U.S.-based drinkers developing a taste for gin wasn’t the only good news for U.K.-based distilleries. Exports of both whisky and gin from the U.K. to Turkey were up in the first half of 2025, and there’s optimism that a trade deal between the U.K. and India will have a similar effect there in the near future. And if reading about all this gin has piqued your interest, we can offer some recommendations.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…