Due to London wine week I sort of missed world gin day. It was a rivalry between drinking local and drinking global. Of course this isn’t entirely true. I did manage to have a lunch involving several gin and tonics and a gin and tonic smoke salmon (yay pished fish) bagel, which was all of the awesome.
I did making up for it though. There was a gin tasting at my local Majestic Wines. After a brief aperitif of the Sipsmith Summer Cup, we tried all of the Fevertree mixers neat. Aside from my childhood (what!?) memories of G’n’T being Schwepps, I do like Fevertree, but I’ve only ever had the regular tonic and the ginger ale, so it was interesting to try the rest. The best discovery of them for me was the mediterranean tonic. It’s much milder than their regular tonic water, so can be used with much subtler gins. To be fair, they were all good.

We were then given a big pile of garnish and let loose on the gin. I will be brutally honest. This mostly involved a lot of gin. More gin than I can discuss in a rational, sober manner (read: remember). My favourite was the Cotswold Gin. It’s a gin from a new whisky company who’ve not yet had whisky for long enough for it to be called Whisky. It was very strong (at 46%) and very gin-y. I like gin that tastes like gin. The other notable ones were a gin from New Zealand called Scapegrace, which would make an excellent Martini and another one, which I can’t remember. It was a gin filled night. It then became a rather rum filled evening as towards the end. We were treated to samples of the rums they had open on their tasting table. Zacapa and professor Cornelius Ampleforth’s Rumbullion. Nom.

Gin. (and rum).