The £40 bottles of gin that are actually worth the price tag
Several of my friends will allow me, and only me, to mix them a G&T. If you’re a gin drinker, you know what this means. It means I use enough ice and the right tonic (Fever-Tree Refreshingly Light, which contains no artificial sweeteners, is the standard). It means I pour a good measure of gin, in a glass that is appropriate for the occasion. And I only pour good gin.
But which gins are good enough? And at what price? Brad Pitt’s The Gardener French Riviera Gin has just arrived in the UK with a price tag of £55 and it is not an outlier. Léoube Mediterranean Gin (41.5%, Daylesford Organic, £55) is fragrant and beautiful – a song of olive trees and wild herbs and sea spray – to the Provence wine estate for which it’s named - and it costs the same. There are now lots of gins at around £40 to £50. Which, if any, actually deliver on that?
If you take gin as seriously as I do, you’ll have more than one bottle at home. My ‘house gin’ is Tanqueray Export Strength London Dry Gin (43.1%, widely available, around £22.50). I get through a lot so try to buy it by the litre, and when it’s on offer. Every so often I allow myself to upgrade the house pour to the beautifully clear-cut and much-loved Sipsmith London Dry Gin (41.6%, widely available, around £30, but also one that I buy on offer). Sipsmith is brilliant for a dirty martini. I’m not part of the contingent who love Gordon’s London Dry Gin (37.5%, widely available, around £17.75), but if you are, it could be worth trying Aldi’s Greysons London Dry Gin (37.5%, Aldi, £11.99).
Right, that’s the house serves dealt with. G&T is a big weekend ritual in my home so there is always a second bottle doing the rounds too. As small luxuries go, fancy gin is a relatively inexpensive one. I could get all granular and say that at £2.85 for a double, even the £40-a-bottle gins are cheaper than a takeaway coffee and less expensive, per serve, than trading up on wine. But the psychology of Nice Things says we don’t want to bean-count our pleasure in that way, we just want to splash out for the sheer pleasure of it.
Of the more spendy gins that are (very thoroughly) taste-tested for the pure joy of that first sip, two olden but golden favourites are No.3 London Dry Gin (46%, thewhiskyexchange.com, £38.25), which is big on juniper, intense and precise, and Dyfi Distillery Pollination Gin (45%, dyfidistillery.com, £37.95), which is thickly aromatic and made from flowers and fragrant leaves foraged in the marshlands and forests near the remote distillery.
Beyond that, I’ve put my current top three in the Bottles of the Week and would particularly like to steer you towards the one from Terlingham Vineyard, which is exquisite. Terlingham is a small, family-run place in Kent that is farmed without artificial pesticides or herbicides. The gin is infused with some of their bacchus wine and is a one-off, a small batch of only 1,300 bottles, which makes it a collector’s item of sorts.
I also love the verbena notes in King Charles III’s Highgrove Organic Garden Botanical Gin (40%, highgrovegardens.com, £39.95). And Brad Pitt’s The Gardener (42%, amathusdrinks.com, £55)? It’s made with pink grapefruit and sweet orange grown on the French Riviera, and basil and winter savory from Pitt’s Miraval wine estate – and it’s as excellent as you’d expect, given the distilling brain is Tom Nichol, the man behind the creation of Tanqueray No. Ten. I’m just not sure I’m ready yet to pay £55.
Bottles of the Week
The Botanist Islay Dry Gin
(46%, Sainsbury’s, £37)
Made by the Bruichladdich distillery, using botanicals foraged on the Hebridean whisky island, this is always a hit at gin tastings I host.
Mermaid Gin
(42%, Tesco, £38)
A burst of citrus with a tang of salinity, this is from the Isle of Wight Distillery and one of the botanicals is rock samphire.
Terlingham Vineyard Dry Gin
(40%, terlinghamvineyard.co.uk, £38.50)
A proper, satisfying gin with subtle notes of sweet clover and elderflower, thanks to the fact that it’s made with bacchus wine and honey.