bringing drinks to life

All cheesy puns aside, we have just had one hell of a week what with a sample bottle of gin arriving on Bitters & Twisted HQ's doorstep on Monday, the small but perfectly formed Boutique Bar Show Tuesday and Wednesday, a Cachaca tasting day held at the Brazilian Embassy on Thursday followed by a night in Brighton with good friends and excellent cocktails. If every week was like this my liver would fail me within the next year but I would die happy! 

I almost don't know where to begin with this blog, but since I have recently talked about both Cachaca and The Boutique Bar Show, I think it only right to talk about Brighton and Gin. So let's start with the rather excellent gin that we at B&T HQ have been eagerly anticipating for some time. Geranium gin!

Over in New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail we met a talented young bartender from Copenhagen named Jimmy Olsen, and over several days drinking got to know him pretty well, so we were pleased when he dropped us a line to tell us that he has just become the Brand Ambassador for Geranium, a new London Dry gin that is launching in Europe as we speak. We were even more pleased when he told us that he sent us a bottle to play with, to see what we think of it.

Now I know the name may conjure up images of your granny's garden or your mother's hanging baskets, but trust me you need to put those images to one side and open your minds. This is not some gimmicky overly floral 'new gin' instead this is a surprise in a bottle. I am pretty cynical when it comes to gin, I am a staunch traditionalist who when faced with a saffron infused, rose petal aromatised, aniseed and cumquat gin, will turn my nose up in disgust and mutter to myself that I may as well be drinking flavoured vodka! If you'll tolerate me climbing on my soapbox for a second, then let me just say, Gin should taste like Gin... you know the stuff, slightly sweet, juniper led with some nice spice and citrus behind it maybe with a hint of liquorice hidden in its depths. It should never leave you confused about what exactly it is that you are sipping. Rant over.

So back to this parcel that arrived on my doorstep on Monday morning... I was delighted to see a premium looking bottle that has been stylishly designed to stand out on a back bar. I was even more pleased to pour myself a little taste and find that it smelled like gin, looked like gin and upon closer inspection tasted like gin, and a bloody good gin at that. Geranium www.geraniumgin.com/ is a proper London style Dry Gin, with plenty of upfront juniper, and a lovely hint of citrus which then gives way to some floral notes (we are guessing this might just be the geranium in it...) that immediately bring crème de violette to mind. The mouth feel is rich and the flavours are beautifully balanced. This is a truly premium product, and we hope it finds distribution in the UK soon!

Obviously sipping gin in the morning leads to a day spent thinking about which classic cocktails you are going to mix up to put it through it's paces and we couldn't resist trying it in a martini (wet of course with a twist) an Aviation and a Hanky Panky. Fast forward to the evening and you find the B&T team smiling as they sip the afore mentioned cocktails. In a wet Martini Geranium really shone through, balancing its sweet, rich and floral notes against the dry vermouth, we tries it with Noilly, then tried adding just a touch of Lillet Blanc and loved it even more! As for the Aviation, it seemed to us that Geranium was custom made for this drink, with its soft floral middle, it balanced perfectly against the maraschino and lemon and of course worked perfectly with the crème de violette. The Hanky Panky, well let's just say Geranium is now our go-to gin for this drink now, as it is ballsy enough to stand up to the sweet vermouth and fernet branca but soft and creamy enough to soften then too. In our opinion this is one of the best gins to launch in a long time and is definitely not one of the new-wave of gimmick gins that have flooded the market in the last couple of years.

Then again, who are we to judge what makes for a great gin? Without calling our expertise into question, we decided that the best test would be to put the remainder of the bottle in the hands of some people who really know their stuff. Since we had received a very kind invitation to go and visit our friends Chris and Amanda who run Brighton's much loved Blanch House www.blanchhouse.co.uk/ we thought it would be the perfect chance to have a bartender throw it around to see what the experts think.

For those of you who don’t know Blanch House, it is a beautiful boutique hotel that just happens to have one of the UK’s best bars hidden behind its very private walls. If you are ever in Brighton you would be a fool not to ring the doorbell and pay a visit to the bar. The quality of the drinks here are top notch and the drinks list always leaves us wishing we could have stayed for just one more. In fact if you are making your way to Brighton you’ll probably want to book a room at Blanch House, take our word for it they are fantastic and you wont need to worry about cab journeys home at the end of the night!

Anyway, back to the drinking! After a few aperitif cocktails at BH and a quick Japanese meal in town, we found ourselves back at the bar where Matt got busy shaking us up every drink we could think of. Fortunately before we got too many drinks in us, I remembered the bottle of Geranium and we had a quick taste. The general consensus (and we were truly in esteemed company with John Gakuru, Chris Edwardes and Matt all willingly offering their opinions) was that Geranium is a very good, balanced, clean and crisp gin that is very mixable. We had Matt throw it around in a few classics before the night degraded into the usual mist of Jager and tequila shots!

To my mind it is great to see a small independent producer launching a well made premium gin not just a gimmick-in-a-bottle as has too often been the case recently. It is even better to get a chance to have a sneak preview with good friends in a great bar. We wish Jimmy every luck looking after Geranium gin and we look forward to seeing it on back bars soon!