After three years of crazy growth, you’d think there might be some let-up in people’s obsession with gin, but far from it, it seems. According to industry leader Gordon’s, gin is now a £1.9bn industry in the UK annually, and that’s forecast to hit £2bn this year. Many gins now fetch £30-40 a bottle, and some of those are only 50cl. Gin seems to have entered a zone previously occupied by champagne, where sales are impervious to uppity pricing.
Amazingly, new gins are still being invented that no one has thought of before. The latest trend is pink gin, which should come as no surprise, because pink is appended to practically every popular drink these days, from sauvignon blanc to pink prosecco, though weirdly you can’t call it that. Could that have anything to do with the fact that pink drinks are more Instagrammable?
The new-wave pink gins are, of course, not the classic cocktail – Plymouth gin with a dash of angostura bitters – but awash with red berry flavours. Pinkster (flavoured with raspberries) and Warner Edwards (with rhubarb) led the charge, but Gordon’s has given the trend such extra welly with its Premium Pink that it seems to have prompted an avalanche of me toos, including some so sweet you question whether they should even be described as gin. There are gins made to look like Provençal rosé and even gin flavoured with rose petals (although I do wonder if you could achieve a similar effect by adding a few drops of rosewater to a decent London dry.)
Orange is another hot trend this summer, with Tanqueray launching a blood orange-flavoured gin called Flor de Sevilla. Again, it’s sweetish, but not cloyingly so, especially once you add a mixer.
Mind you, citrus is always in fashion, and Partridges has cleverly given it a fresh twist with its bergamot-infused No 2 Chelsea Flower Gin, which was opportunistically released just before the royal wedding with a Harry and Meghan swing tag.
Obscure botanicals also feature largely in new releases such as Edinburgh’s 1670, which is made with plants from the Royal Botanic Garden (anyone heard of Tasmannia lanceolata leaf?) and Tarquin’s beautifully balanced Rick Stein Gin, made in collaboration with the chef’s son Charlie, which has a delicate but persistent flavour of fennel and wild camomile. Both are limited releases, which will appeal to collectors, of whom, despite the prices, there are many these days.
Four gins worth splashing out on
Terres de Mistral Gin Majestic £31 (70cl) or £27.90 on the mix-six deal, 40%
A delicate dry, beautifully labelled gin piggybacking on the Provençal rosé craze
Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla £25 (70cl) Ocado, Waitrose, 41.3%
Add tonic, sliced orange, apple, cucumber and mint for a deliciously orangey, Pimm’s-alike
No 2 Chelsea Flower Gin Partridges, £29.95 (50cl), 41.5%
Beautifully packaged and hedonistically summery
Roku Gin £30 (70cl) Waitrose and waitrosecellar.com, 43%
From whisky giant Suntory, this is complex, sophisticated, with six Japanese botanicals including green tea
