In the mid 00�s, the Cocktail Renaissance was just getting rolling. All over the world, bartenders were dusting off century-old cocktail books and trying to recreate them or improve upon them. There was just one major problem. Many of these spirits references in these old books just weren�t made anymore.�Old Tom�was a common category of gin at the turn of the 20th century. Slightly sweetened either with some sort of sugar or with intense botanicals these gins differed dramatically from the dry gins.