Heston’s Lazy Sunshine Gin

What to make of Heston’s Lazy Sunshine Gin, his latest collaboration with Waitrose?

Looks straightforward enough - a guy in a cricket sweater and a Panama sitting in a deckchair. Oh wait, it’s not a man it’s a BULLDOG. 'Course it is!

The 40% ABV gin is aromatised with juniper (has to be) and herbs (sweet basil, rosemary, thyme and lavender) so it's not *that* unusual but there’s a recommendation on the bottle to serve it with a drizzle of olive oil. OLIVE OIL. for goodness sake. Maybe this time Heston has finally gone too far.

Anyway I make it up as a G & T, using plenty of ice, Fevertree Mediterranean tonic as instructed and trickle over a little olive oil (the very posh Chianti Classico EVOO they sent with the bottle), drop in a nocellara olive and gingerly sip.

And you know what - it’s amazing. Really citrussy and herby (the botanicals miraculously accentuated by the oil which gives the whole drink a luscious viscosity without tasting remotely oily. As someone who’s got really bored with flavoured gins, especially fruit flavoured ones it’s a revelation. Not bad value either at £25 in store and from waitrosecellar.com. Many less interesting gins are more expensive than that.

Heston apparently says he was inspired to make the gin by the flavours of Provence so I'm thinking you could serve some Provencal snacks with it like tapenade, anchoiade (anchovy dip) and pissaladière.

The only problem is where’s the sunshine? Even though the weather forecast looks more promising over the next few days there’s already a bit of a chill in the air. You kind of feel they’ve missed the perfect moment to launch it (maybe the timetable slipped due to COVID) but it is delicous and a great bottle to show off to friends. Just drink it up before autumn sets in which really shouldn't be too hard.

See also Six food pairings for gin that might surprise you.

I was sent the bottle as a press sample.

Gin(s) of the month: Barentsz and Theodore gin

It takes quite a lot for me to find room in my drinks cupboard for new gins these days but both these have earned their place. I like them because although they’re distinctive they’re not pointlessly so - or overloaded with ingredients that detract from their basic DNA

The Willem Barentsz Premium Gin 43% £32.95 31dover.com, £36.64 Master of Malt is a tribute to Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz premium gin and is made from two grains - rye + wheat - which makes it almost vodka-ish in its smoothness. It has most of the usual botanicals but a top note of jasmine and orange peel which is enhanced by serving it with a slice of orange. I diluted it 3:1 with a standard Fevertree Indian tonic water and it made a really satisfying G & T.

The Theodore Pictish Botanical gin is more complex with 16 botanicals including pomelo, pine, damask rose, honey and oolong tea though I’m not entirely convinced they would have been “those that the Picts may have encountered on their travels to Scotland” as the blurb on the website would have it. Especially the oolong.

I picked up mainly citrus and spice, though they’re beautifully interwoven (I served it 3:1 again but this time with Fevertree Refreshingly Light) The basic bottle is available for £38.45 from Master of Malt and £38.95 from The Whisky Exchange but you can also buy it in a stunning box for £45 which would make a really great present.

Both are award winners. having picked up gold medals in the Ultra Premium category of The Spirits Business Gin Masters. Barentsz also picked up an IWC Gold and Theodore a silver in the San Francisco World Spirits competition.

Gin of the month: Hepple gin

So many botanicals are bandied around these days that it’s easy to forget that the essential heart of a gin is the juniper. And few distillers handle it better than the Moorland Spirit Company, makers of Hepple gin.

Their intensely junipery gin features two state of the art techniques - vacuum distillation of the young green juniper berries and Co2 extraction for the more mature ones, a technique more commonly used in the perfume industry. The young juniper is grown on their own estate in Northumberland.

At 45% it results in a very intense juniper and citrus hit - which is what attracted me to gin in the first place and has been somewhat lost by some brands along the way.

If you're using it to make a gin and tonic they recommend you serve it quite simply with a naturally light tonic and a twist or a slice of lemon. Oh and a rim of whizzed up Douglas fir needles, sugar and citric acid which I'm sure would add another dimension if you can be bothered though I definitely can’t!). I also rather like it on the rocks so it presumably also makes a great martini. It also goes brilliantly with venison tartare as I discovered a couple of years ago.

There is an impressive team behind the distillery including distiller Chris Garden (ex Sipsmith), chef Valentine Warner and mixologist Nick Strangeway. (You can read more about them here)

All this investment in ingredients and processes doesn’t make for an inexpensive gin. The best going rate I’ve found is £35.95 a bottle at The Whisky Exchange , Master of Malt and Amazon. Majestic has it for £43.80 unless you buy it on their mix six deal when you can get it for £38.70. Elsewhere it can be up to £45 though that's not out of the way these days.

I also love the embossed bottle which been recently and rather gloriously redesigned from a splendidly named company called Timorous Beasties

The gin has been shortlisted by the BBC Food & Farming Awards on which I’m a judge but not in this category so I’ve no idea if it won. You’ll discover that when they announce the awards on Wednesday night!

How to choose the right tonic for your gin

Disclosure: I was sent a bottle of Hepple to taste.

Gin of the month: Albury sloe and damson gins

There are not one but two gins of the month this month - both limited editions from the same distiller Silent Pool in Surrey. One’s a damson and the other a sloe gin and they come in 50cl bottles at - gulp - £30 a bottle.

I nearly didn’t recommend them on that basis but they are basically the best flavoured gins I’ve tasted, homemade included. This is probably because they are unusually high in alcohol - 35% rather than the usual 20-25%% which carries the fruit flavours incredibly well - and I imagine gives them a slightly longer life once open. They are also considerably less sweet than most commercial versions.

Some of you might find them too alcoholic to drink on their own - my gin-loving neighbour did - but I must confess they are exactly the sort of spirits I would want to carry in a hip flask in the unlikely event I were out hunting or yomping across Exmoor. They would also make the perfect nightcap

The damson which is delectably plummy is probably the more approachable of the two though the sloe has a marvellously bitter (but not medicinal) edge that I really find appealing. The distillery recommends you serve it over ice or with a squeeze of lemon but I quite like it neat at room temperature.

The pair would make a great gift for any gin lover. You can buy them from the Silent Pool website*

* they also have a rather lovely gift pack of their own Silent Pool Gin with two beautifully decorated 'copa' glasses