Innholdsfortegnelse for Dec 2020/Feb 2021 i Gin Magazine

Bloom Gin is hoping to be at the heart of the 2021 festival season as the official gin sponsor of American Express presents BST Hyde Park. Cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, along with so many other summer events and festivals, BST Hyde Park is set for a super return in 2021 with hundreds of thousands of festival goers expected to attend the 10-day event in London. Returning to the festival for a second time, Bloom Gin will be serving up its range of fresh and floral gins to revellers and will bring with it the Bloom Gin Bar, serving up tasty G&Ts and cocktails and sporting a VIP sun terrace. It has also developed a special cocktail to serve at the bar: the Summer in Bloom. To…

• Martin Miller’s Winterful Gin is inspired by ingredients commonly used in mulled wine recipes in England and Iceland (where it is known as jóla glögg), and can be served hot or cold. It combines the distiller’s twin-distilled Original blend with botanicals including cinnamon and mandarin orange peel. The gin is available in Waitrose stores around the UK and from Amazon. • Junimperium’s Winter Edition gin is inspired by classic seasonal flavours of Northern Europe and is designed to evoke the sensations of the region’s winter markets. The gin is infused with bitter orange, cardamom, vanilla and cassia bark as well as lingonberries, which are native to the boreal forests of Estonia, Junimperium’s home country. • Tarquin’s Figgy Pudding Gin takes all that’s best about this sticky winter pudding and…

Sarah and Jonathan Nelson, the husband and wife team behind the River Test Distillery in Hampshire, don’t have a background in distilling or even in food and drink. Both are educators: Sarah was a teacher before leaving the profession to raise the couple’s children, while Jonathan worked his way up to a headteacher’s position at a successful primary school. It was in this job, around three and a half years ago, that Jonathan first felt the itch for something else. “I didn’t get the autonomy that I imagined you would have as a headteacher. You get people pulling you in different directions. That planted a seed that the only way I would get that autonomy was if I worked for myself,” he says. “Two of my passions are cooking and…

When it comes to gin, the finished product in the bottle may be the star of the show, but its botanicals act as the multiple teams behind the scenes who ensure the product is polished, delicious and consistent. There are few who know this crucial side of production better than Ivano Tonutti, master of botanicals at Bombay Sapphire. Ivano has been working with Bacardi for three decades (passing his 30th anniversary at the company in July) and has been responsible for botanicals within the group for more than 20 years, lending his expertise to Martini, Noilly Prat and Benedictine, among others. He has worked with Bombay Sapphire to source and test its botanicals since Bacardi bought the brand in 1998. “What was immediately clear was that in the iconic blue…

Despite being fundamental to the nature and flavour of gin, we tend to talk about juniper in a very generic way. And perhaps that’s understandable; EU regulations stipulate that the spirit must be “produced by flavouring … [specifically] with Juniperus communis”, or common juniper. And sure enough, at least 95 per cent of distilleries stick to using this species and this species alone. But there are innovative makers looking beyond common juniper to the 60 or so other species in the Juniperus genus. Selecting the right variety involves both botanical knowledge (some are toxic) and, you might imagine, a fair amount of trial and error. When distilled, Juniperus ashei is said to be “rather foul-tasting”, while Juniperus foetidissima, a.k.a. ‘stinking juniper’, rather speaks for itself! However, such effort is rewarded with…

Tarquin’s Cornish Gin is welcoming guests back to its north Cornwall distillery for a visit to its brand new Gin School – with an extra-personal twist. Opened in a listed building on Padstow harbour, the school offers a hands-on distilling experience inspired by founder Tarquin Leadbetter’s own journey – learning how to make gin on a stove top at home. To make their gins truly unique, visitors are encouraged to bring their own botanicals, from homegrown herbs to foraged fruits. They will then be coached through the production process, measuring botanicals, distilling on mini copper pot stills, then labelling, signing and waxing their bottles by hand and adding individual tasting notes. Tarquin Leadbetter, founder and master distiller at Southwestern Distillery, said: “I set up the distillery almost a decade ago…

English gin maker Bullards is bringing a taste of the seaside to its range with its new Coastal Gin. In homage to the spirit maker’s home county, the new gin features a cast of botanicals foraged from the Norfolk coast including sea purslane, marsh samphire and sea aster. These ingredients are combined with orange and lemon peel for a gin that Bullards says “subtly reminds you of the salty freshness of a walk beside the sea”. To make the gin, master distiller Jake Wilson steeps the botanicals for 12 hours with a neutral grain spirit in a 400-litre copper column still. Like Bullards’ other spirits, it’s produced in small batches at the distiller’s home: the grade two-listed Crystal House in central Norwich. The new release comes as Bullards unveils a…

Despite all the unusual twists and turns that 2020 has taken, it remains a special year for British gin brand 6 O’Clock Gin; this autumn, it celebrates its 10th birthday. It was one of the first producers on the scene after Sipsmith kickstarted the modern UK craft gin revolution, inspired by a long-standing British tradition but staking a firm claim in the 21stcentury market. But 6 O’Clock Gin’s origin story stretches back much further than 2010, to the relative gin wasteland of the 1980s. This was when its parent company, Bramley & Gage, came into being. In the early days, the company wasn’t in the liquor business at all. “My parents bought a fruit farm in Devon and were growing strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants,” explains Michael Kain, who took over…

It’s a match made in heaven, gin and ginger. The clue is in the name, right? The link isn’t as obvious as we may think, but it’s there. Gin is a simple shortening of genever, although the word gin was also used in 1843 to describe something as having ‘spirit, spunk or temper’ as well as ginger, and the slang ‘gin up’ referred to enlivening. However, ginger and gin have had a close relationship for the last 200 years, a link first forged at the Frost Fairs. My research suggests that gin and gingerbread was one of the earliest ‘food pairings’, served at the Frost Fairs held on the frozen tideway of the River Thames. Frost Fairs were large events and have been held since as far back as the…

The Botanist Gin head forager James Donaldson is responsible for hand-picking the 22 locally-grown botanicals used to make the spirit. These days, Donaldson spends most of his days on remote Islay, a “rock in the Atlantic” in his words. Yet this professional forager is very well travelled – and never leaves home without an apple or a tea towel. What have been some of the most memorable and interesting countries and places that your work has taken you? I was lucky enough to visit the USA with Adam Hannett, The Botanist’s head distiller, in 2019. It was a whirlwind tour – three cities in four days – but it was great fun. It was incredible to see the enthusiasm for The Botanist Gin everywhere we visited and we received a…

The Derbyshire Distillery in Chesterfield has launched a new gin in partnership with the Royal British Legion, to raise money for the military charity. Eleventh Hour Gin was the brainchild of Richard Aspinall, an ex-serviceman and sales manager at Derbyshire Distillery, who wanted to do something to support the charity. From each bottle of the gin sold, £3 will go directly to the Legion. The traditional dry gin is distilled with botanicals including sour cherry, ginger, lemon and – fittingly – poppy seeds. Its label has been created in partnership with British fashion designer Nigel Cabourn, famous for his menswear collections inspired by military dress and vintage clothing. Richard, who served in the British Army for five years, has first-hand experience of the Royal British Legion and its valuable services.…

Want to help fund an arctic maritime navigation while sipping your gin and tonic? Northwest Passage Expedition Gin can help. The craft gin from the Orkney Distillery, producer of the award-winning Kirkjuvagr gin brand, has been created to raise awareness of ocean conservation and help finance a row of the Northwest Passage in 2021. Also known as the Last Great First, this arctic route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was opened up by intrepid maritime explorers searching for a sailing passage to Asia. Flavoured with botanicals from the shores of Orkney and the Hudson Bay in Canada, the gin pays homage to the chilly climes that inspired it and the explorers who risked their lives on the ocean to carve a new route to the Far East. The botanical…

“I stress the uniqueness of the Australian landscape and its metaphysical and mythic content.”– Arthur Boyd Increased interest in and understanding of Australia’s Indigenous heritage has, in part, been driven by education and the accessibility of native foods and ingredients, nowhere more so than in the development of the Australian gin industry. Founded in 2002, Mount Uncle Distillery was one of the first distilleries to embrace native botanicals in its gin recipe. Founder Mark Watkins discovered an early gin recipe used by local settlers and set himself the challenge of replacing the traditional ingredients with native. The result was the aptly named Botanic Australis. Aside from juniper, it contains all Australian ingredients that are grown either on the property, or its surrounds. They include: peppermint gum, anise myrtle, wattleseed, pepperberry,…

In opening a distillery, the ‘to do’ list is extensive and has no chronological order, which means that it requires multi-tasking on a continual basis. How long each task will take is, of course, only apparent once it’s completed. But at least there is a starting point: writing a business plan. “When you’re just starting out you have so many great ideas, and a business plan makes things clear in your mind. It’s also a reality check for all the outgoings even before producing a bottle of gin you can sell,” says Robert Hicks, co-founder of Highland Liquor Company, which produces Seven Crofts gin. If it seems that help is required to write a business plan, experienced professionals can advise on this, together with every other aspect of the project.…

Hard seltzers have been the talk of the drinks industry recently and rightfully so – this low-ABV drink tripled its sales in the United States within the course of one year. The summer of 2019 was dubbed ‘The Summer of Seltzer’ by the Washington Post. This alcohol-infused sparkling water is a big hit among millennials and part of the so-called mindful drinking movement, which is also gaining popularity in Europe. Several gin producers have already released their own hard seltzers, now followed by two Dutch genever brands. HOOGHOUDT’S RAW SELTZERS Usually made from grain neutral spirit, the heart of Hooghoudt’s new line of hard seltzers is formed by its RAW Genever. This genever is made from a 100 per cent malt spirit distilled in copper kettles and created by blending…

It sounds like a great idea: nature abounds with botanicals that can be foraged for gin. North America is home to many varieties of juniper. Why not make a wild-foraged gin? Could there be any truer expression of terroir? Not so fast. Out of dozens of junipers growing wild in North America, only a handful are palatable. Molly Cummings, founder of WildGins, rejected the local Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei). “It is just not fun,” said Cummings. “It doesn’t taste good, doesn’t smell good and does not make a good gin.” But Cummings, a biology professor, had seven more native junipers to choose from. She now drives seven hours from her Austin, Texas, distillery to the Apache Mountains for foraging/camping trips. Cummings collects berries from two varieties: alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana)…

The festive period is one of merriment, seeing loved ones, and enjoying a tipple or two. It is also a time when many people purchase a bottle of something a little different to their usual – something that they typically get “just for the holidays” or “because it’s Christmas”. After all, once you’ve had a small glass of Drambuie and maybe a Rusty Nail, what do you do? How many Advocaat-based Snowballs can you really drink? We’ve surveyed a number of gin fans to discover what spirits and liqueurs are typically left over in their homes after Christmas and come up with some gin-based cocktails to put them to good use. ADVOCAAT This is a Dutch egg liqueur that is often brandy-based and is a thicker version of its American…