alcohol

Shetland reel gin video tastings

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Debbie from Shetland Reel gin kindly sent me one of their tasting packs to try, and we decided it would be fun to do some virtual tastings together. I’ve collated the videos below for your viewing pleasure…

You can find the Shetland Reel team on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can get your hands on a tasting pack for £39.50 from their website (at time of writing).

I was introduced to Shetland Reel by The Gin Cooperative as part of my support for International Scottish Gin Day, make sure you check them out and pour yourself a Scottish gin on 24 October to celebrate! Let me know your favourite Scottish gin on Twitter and Instagram.

Meet the makers…Roehill Springs

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As we lead up to International Scottish Gin Day, I’ve teamed up with Roehill Springs gin to find out a bit more about them. They kindly sent me a bottle of their Gin No.5 to try, and I chatted to Shirley, one half of the founding team, about their background, inspirations and future plans.

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Roehill Springs Gin No.5

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Note: The team at Roehill Springs kindly sent me a bottle of their gin to try, but as always I’ll let you know what I honestly think

Roehill Springs No5 ginRoehill Springs Distillery is one of the newer distilleries emerging in the Scottish gin scene. Established in 2019, they’re based near Keith – sort of between Aberdeen and Inverness – on their third-generation farm. They are also one of the few distilleries that actually make their own gin – all of their gin is distilled, bottled and labelled on site, nothing is contracted to established distilleries (FYI – there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but lots of people don’t admit it and that’s misleading). So, why is this called Gin No.5? Where are numbers 1-4? After plucking up the courage to have a go at making his own gin, Duncan experimented with different batches and recipes and after many tasting sessions at home with friends and family, they settled on the fifth recipe, and in turn the name. Duncan, alongside wife Shirley, distil their gin in a traditional 30l copper pot still using botanicals foraged from the local area before blending it with spring water from Roehill (an area named after the abundance of Roe deer), which, as you can probably guess, also helped them name their distillery. Using a mixture of the copper pot still, a column still and a vapour basket, they add juniper, coriander, angelica root, cassia bark, pink peppercorns, and then some secret ingredients which they won’t disclose.

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Edinburgh Seaside gin

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Note: This post contains affiliate links, marked by (Ad) which means if you click that to buy your bottle of gin I will receive some pennies.

Seaside Edinburgh gin

One of the top tourist attractions in Edinburgh is the Edinburgh Gin distillery; launched in 2010, they take inspiration from the city’s boozy history – Leith was a key port in the 1700s, importing genever from The Netherlands. Despite the long history, they are very forward thinking. They teamed up with Heriot-Watt University to access the students of the Brewing and Distilling MSc which was a world first. Since launch, they’ve built up quite the repertoire under head distiller David Watkinson. Their flagship gin features fourteen botanicals, including some slightly more unusual ingredients like pine buds, cobnuts and lemongrass, and is juniper forward with hints of citrus. There is also a large range of flavoured gins – both real gins and properly labelled liqueurs. Today though we are trying their Seaside edition. This was the first collaboration with the students on Heriot-Watt’s MSc course and features coastal botanicals scurvy grass, ground ivy and bladderwrack. They balance the salinity with spice, using coriander, grains of paradise and cardamom. They recommend this as a bright G&T, or in a martini where they ramp up the saltiness to garnish with olive and anchovy.

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Craft Gin Club – September 2020

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Stranger & Sons ginNote: Please note if you join Craft Gin Club using the links in this post, you will receive money off your first box and I will receive money off a future box via the referral link.

I’m going to be straight with you. I was considering cancelling my [affiliate] Craft Gin Club subscription this month, mostly because the pictures teasing this month’s gin featured coconuts and mangoes and tropical fruits and I was really worried it was going to be a fruity/flavoured gin which is just not my thing. But I decided to give it a chance and make a decision after this box. Boy am I glad I didn’t cancel. This month’s gin is Stranger & Sons hailing from India – this was actually part of the 2019 Ginvent calendar and you can read a fairly in depth review of it here. Whilst a part of me it is sad that it is a gin I’ve already tried, I’m excited to have more than 30ml of it to play with. Continue reading →

Stonecutter Spirits Single Barrel gin

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Stonecutter Spirits Single Barrel ginStonecutter Spirits are based in rural Vermont, in a 12,000 sq foot distillery overlooked by mountains. Situated as it is, their weather frequently changes humidity, temperature and pressure, and here they set up their distillery where they create whiskey and barrel aged gin. The gin is not only gluten free, but also certified Kosher, made with cardamom, orange peel, juniper, liquorice root and coriander, plus unusual botanicals rose petals and green tea. The botanicals were picked to complement the Kentucky bourbon barrels and enhance the caramel notes; they say that the barrels help bring the flavours together and blend the cardamom, orange and green tea. In 2019 their gin won a Double Gold at the San Francisco International Spirit Awards, so let’s see how it holds up.

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Vanagandr gin

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Vanagandr ginVanagandr gin is the product of Enrique Pena, who left his career in business to set up and build his own distillery from scratch. Made in the autonomous community Galicia in northern Spain, he distils his gin in super small batches of 440 bottles at a time. Alongside the usual suspects juniper and angelica root, he also adds in sweet orange and lemon peel, green cardamom, nutmeg, cassia and ceylon cinnamon. The gin is then blended with fresh water sourced just 100m from the distillery. As well as handpicking his botanicals, Vanagandr gin uses a base spirit which is 100% wheat which, combined with the 14 hour slow distillation process, produces a rich gin with a soft finish.

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Sculte gin

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Sculte ginFor today’s blog we raid the shelves of the random bottles given to me by an old housemate, and with this head to the Netherlands with Sculte gin. Based in a former monastery near the German border, founder Gerard Velthuis set up his distillery and now makes whisky, gin and brandy capturing the spirit of the Twente region. Using barley as a base, they make their gin with juniper, herbs and onions. Now, that sounds a tad strange (and it is), but the town they are based in, Ootmarsum, is also called the Siepelstad (Onion town) which is their main tourist draw. I’m confused, hesitant and slightly curious about how this will taste – but having just learnt to make a Gibson martini, if it tastes of onions then at least I have a starting point…

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City of London Distillery Christopher Wren gin

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Note: This post contains affiliate links marked as [Ad], if you click on this and buy a bottle of gin then I will receive a small commission. 

City of London Christopher Wren ginSo you might have seen my previous posts about the City of London Distillery – I’ve already tried their Six Bells gin, Square Mile gin and Authentic London dry gin, and today I’m drinking the Christopher Wren edition. Now, you might know that the City of London Distillery was the first gin distillery within the City of London for nearly 200 years, and you might know that Christopher Wren is very famous for designing, amongst other things, St. Paul’s Cathedral. But, fun fact, when I went to visit the distillery and bar (which I recommend doing after lockdown as it’s lovely) there was a poster in the toilet advertising that it takes less steps to walk to St. Paul’s from the distillery than it does to climb to the top of St. Paul’s. Now, I haven’t fact checked this, but it just shows how close the two are. This gin was created in collaboration with Tom Nichol (who, at the time, was the master distiller at Tanqueray) and this is made to be a classic London dry gin. In this expression, they use only one type of citrus (dried orange peel) alongside juniper, coriander, liquroice and angelica root. The tasting notes on their website say the candied orange flavour carries throughout, and as someone that isn’t massively keen on orange, this might have been a poorly thought out purchase on my part. But, here we go.

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Hendrick’s Orbium gin

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Hendricks Orbium ginNow, if you’ve ever been in a shop or a bar, you’ve probably seen and heard of Hendrick’s gin. The one that people think is fancy because it tastes of cucumber and has a nice bottle. Last March, they released a Midsummer Solstice gin which focused on the floral flavours of a summer bloom, and in June released the Orbium gin. Now, we all know the ‘history’ of gin and tonic, the quinine from a tree bark had anti-malarial properties, we mixed it with booze etc etc. Here, Hendrick’s have made a ‘quininated’ gin, as in they took their gin and added quinine, wormwood and blue lotus blossom. On their own website they say “it is almost certainly not for everybody” which intrigues me. It seems like a bold move for a major brand, even for one that builds itself around the unusual oddities of life. They’ve clashed together the flavours traditionally found in tonic and vermouth, which bring bitter boozy notes to mind. They say these are balanced by the blue lotus flowers, which takes the flavour from floral to bitter via a long slow finish. They suggest making it into a martini or a Martinez, or simply mixing it with soda. So, this should be an interesting taste test.

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