That's the Spirit! by Jonathan Ray

Author:Jonathan Ray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Quadrille Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

ISLE OF HARRIS GIN SCOTLAND

I love absolutely everything about this gin. I love its strikingly beautiful bottle (twisted glass with a wooden cork stopper and a base of delicate blue); I love its artisanal paper label (flecked with copper); I love its unique flavour (infused with sugar kelp); I love its strength (45% vol); I love the fact that they like you to add a splash of sugar kelp aromatic water to it when drinking it neat (it adds a distinct note of the sea); I love its story (the Isle of Harris Distillery in Tarbert was built in 2015 to make whisky; gin-making fills the time whilst they wait for the whisky to mature).

Actually, hold on a sec, one thing I don’t love is how complicated Isle of Harris Gin is to get hold of. For some reason, they like you only to buy it direct from the distillery or the distillery’s own website rather than from the usual go-to places for lovers of fine spirits such as Master of Malt or the Whisky Exchange. I’m afraid it drops a mark here.

Oh, and I know my maths is hopeless so I’ve probably got this wrong but given that the gin retails for £37 ($50) per 70cl bottle and the sugar kelp aromatic water retails for £20 ($28) per 5cl bottle, this means that if the water was sold in the same size bottle as the gin, the water would retail for, erm, £280 ($380). Can that be right?!

These quibbles apart, it’s a corkingly fine gin and a sensual delight to serve and to drink. And given that the sugar kelp aromatic water is created by that remarkable apothecary, Amanda Saurin, who can do no wrong in my eyes, they’re forgiven. They use nine botanicals: juniper, coriander, cassia bark, angelica, bitter orange peel, cubeb, liquorice, orris root and the aforementioned and crucial sugar kelp, harvested from the deep by local diver Lewis Mackenzie.

Who’d have thought the Outer Hebrides would be home to such a magnificent gin? I can’t wait for their inaugural Hearach whisky to be ready.

45% vol; www.harrisdistillery.com

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