I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to Monkey 47 gin. The origins of Monkey 47 could have come from some sort of work of fiction. The original recipe is credited to one Wing Commander Mongomery Collins; born in 1909 in Madras in British India to a British Diplomat, he was posted to Germany [...]

I recently had the pleasure of visiting a branch of Waitrose in the sprawling metropolis that some call London. Presented with a near-bewildering array of gins that I have yet to try I picked Adnams Copperhouse Gin. This was originally brought to my attention by @BlackPlastic who raved about it, and came very close to buying me a bottle [...]

I don’t really own many books on boozing. I do have a copy of Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, and a few books by the god of home-brew, C J J Berry himself, but on the whole, my bookshelves are mostly dominated by sci-fi and pop-science. When I was contacted asking if I would like a copy [...]

A recent trip to Waitrose revealed a greatly expanded gin range gracing their shelves. Alongside their normal gins were No. 3 Gin (which is fantastic news as it gives me somewhere local to buy it), Chase Gin and Bloom. Two new gins to choose from; the decision really came down to cost as I already had [...]

Tonight, I Tanqueray. This is a gin that has graced my shelves a few times in the last year, but it always disappears so quickly and I have never managed to get around to writing my thoughts down. Tonight, this changes. To many, Tanqueray is eponymous with truly high-quality gin; it is the benchmark that [...]

When I bought my bottle of Oxley gin, I also bought a bottle of Finsbury London Dry Gin – well, it was on offer and it isn’t exactly expensive to start with. The bottle is almost like a massive hip-flask; shallow from front-to-back and quite wide. With a yellow label slightly reminiscent of a Boddingtons [...]

While the economy flounders, gin is enjoying a renaissance with new brands popping up nearly every week. Why is this? The rise in the popularity of gin is inextricably linked to the cocktail revival and to understand that, we need to look at what has gone before. Both the UK and US have, in the last [...]

I have tried some brilliant gins recently and all the while, at the back of my mind, I have had this nagging thought that I should be trying some of the lesser known and more budget gins. In a stroke of serendipitous timing, an opportunity presented itself recently when a fellow gin enthusiast asked if [...]

I first came across Oxley in Heathrow airport in September 2009. It was just launching in the UK and the first place it was available was Heathrow Terminal 3. I was about to embark on a business trip to Abu Dhabi and spent a good two or three hours milling around the terminal waiting for [...]

When I was at university, the word “sloane” was a derogatory term for students from a privileged upbringing; where many of us were struggling to survive after drinking our student grants, a sloane would be driving around in their brand-new VW Polo and pondering which cocktail bar to paint red that night. Anyway, irrelevant distractions [...]