In a glass of its own
August 26th, 2010 by Grace
It was Sir Winston Churchill who famously declared the only way to make the perfect gin martini was to pour a liberal amount of the chilled spirit into an equally frigid and correctly-shaped glass, pop in a couple of olives and show the glass to the vermouth bottle on the mantelpiece. So it is, perhaps, only fitting the nation's first dedicated gin bar should open just a juniper berry's throw from Blenheim Palace, the place of his birth.
Here, one can sample "The Ultimate G&T", which uses Blackwood's 60 per cent, which claims to be the world's only vintage gin, and Q tonic, featuring hand-picked cinchona bark (quinine) from the Peruvian Andes and organic agave - albeit at a wallet-busting £16.75-a-pop.
In any other year, this could be seen as merely another gimmicky splash in the glass from the spirits and leisure industries ever eager to find new ways to persuade us to part with our booze dollar. But the fact that The Feathers, in the charming Cotswold village of Woodstock, Oxfordshire, has managed to gather no fewer than 50 gins from eight different countries and has installed a "Gin Ambassador" in residence to guide the less sophisticated gin drinker through their menu, is as good a sign as any that the intensely aromatic spirit has come a long way since it was 18th Century London's crack cocaine of its day. back then, it was drunk not only like water, but instead of it due to the potentially lethal qualities of Adam's Ale at that time.
Others are following suit. London's Harvey Nichols has opened a martini terrace on its fifth floor until the end of July. The truth is the days of your only choice being whether you want your gin in a green, blue or clear bottle are long gone. The rise and rise of vodka as the fashionable drink has at last seen gin distillers responding in a remarkable and highly profitable manner.
Just as vodka enticed consumers with increasingly varied and expensive offerings – think Grey Goose at upwards of £45 a bottle – so gin has gown up, in a bid to restore the place it once occupied in the sophisticated art deco era of cocktails and cruise ships.
The main weapon in its delicious arsenal is the creation of super-premium gins, infused with ever-more exotic botanicals, sometimes in small batches and made in such unlikely locations as The Shetlands. Paying more than £20 for a bottle of gin was unthinkable in the Nineties, but now super-premium brands such as Oxley, distilled at minus 5C, are pushing well in to the £40-plus region and producing sales figures that are causing the collective jaws of more established gin distillers to hit the floor with a mighty thud. And while the gin market in general is declining by 7 per cent a year, many super-premium offerings are reporting annual sales increases of up to 48 per cent.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
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