What a month! The sun has shone and pub gardens have reopened! The industry still has a long way to go, but finally there is light at the end of tunnel. And that light got a little brighter for me today as I not only had my first haircut in well over a year, but I also got my first covid-19 vaccine! There’s been plenty else going on this month too, mind, so without further ado….
Continue readingAnother year has flown by and what a year it was! Both for gin as a whole and also for my more personal gin pursuits. It has, on the whole, been an outstanding year for the industry with sales reaching an all-time high and gin being declared the most popular spirit in the UK. But, with the highs of sales in excess of 47m bottles of gin, came the inevitable lows as people looked to sell out and cash in. The wonderful gin community rallied though and, desperate to protect our sacred spirit, the #StopFuckingWithGin hashtag was born! While The Pool asked if the gin joke had gone too far, and Gin Monkey – rightly – reminded us to use the hashtag with due respect, there were plenty of offenders who deserved little sympathy – such as gin and tonic tea bags, crisps and, quite possibly the worst of them all, G&T fun buns!
When so many new gins are launching every month in the UK and further afield, how do we bloggers and enthusiasts keep up? I like to keep a close eye on Instagram and Twitter where I share my finds with a #newginalert, while gin festivals are also a great way to not only hear about new releases but taste them too. I can still walk into a bar or pub and spot a gin that I’ve yet to try, but it’s pretty rare that I’ll never even have heard of it before. But that was how I first came across Inshriach Gin, and that was just the beginning of this serendipitous story.
A shed can be many things, from a small store for the lawnmower to a comfortable place of retreat, but few sheds contain gin distilleries. And even fewer distilleries are housed in an award-winning Shed of the Year. But that is from where Inshriach Gin hails; 2015’s Shed of the Year on the Inshriach Estate, deep in the Cairngorms National Park. Where better, then, to hold the London launch of the newest edition to the range, Inshriach Navy Strength 57%, than East London’s stunning Shed Village; itself a contender for Shed of the Year in 2016?
Gin A Ding Ding 