I’m in Melbourne for Christmas and popped into Acland Cellars for a scout around their interesting range of imported spirits. (We’d had dinner at Blue Corn Mexican around the corner first, highly recommended!). They had a reasonable collection of uncommon gins, 47 Pink, both Martin Millers, Bulldog, as well as the usuals. I’ve had my eye on the G’Vine for a while so I decided to splash out and put down $90 on an untried gin. Spolier alert: not disappointed. G’Vine is a French grape  based gin. The neutral base is made from grape spirit. This makes for a very smooth bas ..read more

We were lucky to be invited to a housewarming party over the weekend. The host is a passionate spirits enthusiast. He has custom built shelves with down lights to house his collection. He even brews his own bitters. My first gin sample of the evening was St George’s Terrier gin. I’m not going to write up full notes on this gin as it is very strongly flavoured with coriander, which I absolutely cannot abide. Coriander and its root a quite common ingredients in gin, and as long as I can’t taste or smell it, that’s fine, but it was so over-powering in this gin that I really couldn’t do it justice ..read more

My beloved Gentleman Caller recently took a business trip to the States, and bless him, used up his entire duty-free allowance on gin for me. Didn’t bring home a single bottle of whisky for himself. Now that is true love. My first tasting is of a gin I hadn’t heard of before. Farmer’s Gin is a small batch organic gin made by the distillery behind Crop Harvest Vodka. I’ve been trying to work out where the distillery is, but their websites and Facebook pages give little away. THE PROCESS The base spirit is made with certified organic grains. Its small batch distilled, not sure if it is ..read more

William Chase Gin is a gin I desperately wanted to love. William Chase is the only gin in England made from a neutral spirit made by the distillery; all other distilleries buy in their neutral spirit. Most gins are made with a grain based neutral spirit, William Chase make their spirits from cider apples. So you can see why I was excited to try it. THE PROCESS Chase Distillery have a field to bottle approach, they grow apples and potatoes for their vodka on their property in Herefordshire. They make their base spirit, essentially vodka, by fermenting then distilling the apples and potatoe ..read more

Firstly, a confession. Somewhere between my aunt’s house in London and my house in Sydney, my notebook with all my gin notes from my trip to Europe went missing. Hence it’s been months and I still haven’t written up my gin tastings. I’ve finally accepted that the notes are gone for good and I’m going to attempt to recreate them, please forgive me if anything is a bit hazy. On one of our days in London, the Gentleman Caller and I indulged both our geek out interests. First we headed out to Bletchley Park, where the Engima Code was broken and the first computers were built. This place is like a ..read more

If money was no object and you just wanted to make the most wonderful gin possible, what would you do? This was the starting point for Martin Miller’s Gin. And it’s not a bad starting point, if money is no object. Martin Miller the man came to prominence publishing an etiquette guide called Success with the Fairer Sex. I can only imagine what that was about. He established the Miller Academy, a Victorian style salon, but he got bored with burlesque at about the time in became a major plot point in Gossip Girl. I have sympathy for that. Somewhere along the line his attention turned to gin. THE ..read more

‘But hang on!’ the most observant of you say. ‘You already reviewed Martin Miller’s Gin!’ That’s true, but I reviewed the Westbourne Strength, which clocks in at 45.8% ABV, this is the regular strength at 40% ABV. From my extensive research (reading their website…) I have gathered that the two versions are made in much the same way, shipped to Iceland, and then this version just has slightly more of the delicious fjord water mixed with it. If you have any better intel, let me know! So I won’t go over all the making details again, you can read them here, while I skip ahead to the good part ..read more