December has, once again, been dominated by early school closures and covid – and this Christmas started to feel a lot like Last Christmas – but my favourite festive spirit saw me through!

Booze News

Hospitality has been hitting the headlines again with the industry enduring yet another tough month and facing increasing uncertainty as we enter the New Year, so do get out and support your local if you can.

Elsewhere the whisky wars between Jim Murray and Becky Paskin were reignited with the former’s Daily Mail declaration of a “War on Woke”. It’s a long story but, for a fair assessment of the situation, do have a read of Bernadette Pamplin’s Weighing In & Keeping Balance article.

And, unsurprisingly, M&S have also gone to war with Aldi over their best-selling snowglobe gin liqueur. With Aldi reportedly rejecting appeals to stop selling the products, this battle could last far longer than the appeal of such festive fripperies.

New Gin Alerts

Two new gins stood out for me this month: Blenheim Palace Gin made by Sky Wave and featuring Blenheim’s own oranges and apples; and Tarquin’s limited batch of SeaDog Sloe Gin which comes in at a whooping 38% ABV!

My Month in Gin

As well as writing a few articles (including this one for Burum Collective), I enjoyed judging the  Low & No Masters and World Gin Awards this month. The World Gin Awards were judged remotely from the comfort of our own homes, which is just as well given that I totally overslept and had to roll straight out of bed and into assessing neat gins with no more than a sip of water in between! Rock and roll right?!

Welcome to My Collection

Given all the goodies I received this month I can only conclude I must have been a very good girl! Thanks to WL Distillery for their Christmas gift box, to One Gin for their pack of miniatures and new highball glasses, to Audemus Spirits for their amazing gift box containing two Pink Pepper Gins and to Business France for a lovely bottle of wine. I also love my Elephant Orange & Cocoa Gin and gin pin and am looking forward to getting to know sustainable Copalli Rum and the original Citadelle Gin better.

I was also very lucky to receive this amazing Christmas haul from my family, including this incredible neon Gin A Ding Ding bell!

Catching Up and Looking Forward

I’m really pleased with the feedback I’ve already received on my article looking at how distillers are reducing their carbon footprint throughout the production process for Burum Collective, so if you’re interested, why not take a look at that? As for January it is, once again, hard to know quite what the New Year will bring but I should definitely have a few more articles published – and not only about sustainability this time! 🍸🛎🛎