Tonight’s #onthebar is @forest_gin Earl Grey: At first, I wasn’t 100% sure how I felt about the flavour – I like tea, I like gin – it should be a no brainer right? Well, from pulling out the cork (seconds after it arrived) and smelling it any reservations I might have had were gone… This gin is made by a husband and wife Lindsay and Karl and is hand-crafted in small batches with a range of botanicals that can be found in Macclesfield Forest (hurrah! Local!) this includes bilberries, raspberries, blackberries moss, ferns, bark and a “sprinkling of wild flowers” and a special blend of earl grey. So how does it rank?
1 point for the mix of botanicals, I love that this a locally made gin and uses a unique mix of ingredients. 0.5 points for ease to buy – I can get this online easily but not in a local store, the nearest to me I think would be Leeds (Harvey Nichols). 1 point for packaging because this is beautiful, and it’s never leaving the bar. You may not be able to tell but the bottle is English Porcelain made by Wade Ceramics and the design is a papercut design from artist Suzy Taylor (a lot of effort has gone into this and it shows), 1 mark for versatility, this gin works beautifully with flavoured or traditional mixers or as part of a cocktail (more about that later!) Now for price – and this is an important one: You can buy a bottle from between £55 to c£70 online (depending on where you shop) which makes it’s a higher-end gin however the effort that goes into hand picking the ingredients and distilling the gin along with the packaging justifies it alone before you even get to the taste. I’m also not sure there is anything else similar in the market right now so another mark there. Leading up to the final part – the taste, this gin isn’t clear, it’s an amber (tea like!) colour and has a beautifully smooth taste but very importantly you don’t lose the gin element to this, I did also sip this gin straight over ice and it was beautiful so I’m going with a 5 and if you are a gin lover I recommend this as a must for your collection!
If you haven’t entered yet you can win a bottle of the Forest Gin Earl Gray on my Instagram Page now (@bethshehata) until 4th July 2018.
Overall rating 9.5
