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Discover, Sip, Repeat: Your Adventure Begins Here
This week we are focusing on 6 O’clock gin, we explore their history and take a look at the wonderful gins that they produce. Also, very excited to announce that this month's online tasting, taking place on Thursday 17th December will be hosted with 6 O'Clock featuring three of their gins along with a virtual distillery tour on the night! Book your tickets and find out more about the tasting here.
6 O’clock Gin began its life in the 1980s when two fruit farmers, Edward Bramley Kain and his partner Penelope Gage found at the end of their harvest that they were left with excess fruit. To stop this going to waste they started to experiment with making a range of liqueurs and found that more money could be made this way!
At this point Bramley and Gage had gone from strength to strength. As the years went by Edward and Penelope began to look towards retirement and selling the business on, their son and daughter, Micheal and Felicity didn’t want to see the business go so in 2007 decided to take it over.
At this point they wanted to start producing a gin. They already had a recipe developed by their father for the sloe gin but it wasn’t of high enough standard to be sold as a stand alone gin. It took two and half years of trial and error to develop a new London Dry Gin with the final recipe using botanicals such as juniper, coriander, anglica, orris, savory, elderflower and orange peel.
The gin is distilled in a double sphere condenser, this allows greater contact with copper thus creating a smoother spirit. Within the still a neutral base spirit, water and the botanicals are loaded. The botanicals are left to soak then the still is heated to create 1000 bottles of gin!
The spirit is then taken down to 43% with the addition of water sourced from the Tarka Springs in North Devon. This water has very low mineral content and is very soft making it perfect for gin.
Strikingly smooth to taste and beautiful to behold in its iconic Bristol-blue glass bottle, the original, multi-award-winning London Dry was born in 2010, perfected from the old family gin recipe.
It has a soft and citrusy flavour, led by juniper, carefully balanced with coriander seed, angelica root, orris root, winter savory, elderflower and orange peel, all lovingly distilled for a deeply-delicious taste experience.
With a 50% ABV, this is the ‘export strength’ expression of the London Dry gin.
Exquisitely engineered for a more complex flavour profile, they have added extra juniper and introduced six new botanicals – green cardamom, nutmeg, cumin, cassia bark, cubeb pepper and lemon for a bolder, richer flavour; an earthy sweetness combines with citrus freshness for a dry spicy finish.
Hand-picked British damsons are left to steep for six months or more in the London Dry. Sugar is added, but not too much, just enough to balance the natural tartness of the fruit.
Slowly matured, the resulting rich, ruby-red gin is velvety and smooth with an intense depth of flavour and fruity dryness; unlike many fruit gins, it delivers quite a kick bottled with an alcohol content of 40%.
Generous quantities of hand-picked hedgerow sloes, combined with just the right amount of sugar, are added to the London Dry Gin, then it’s all left to soak slowly for at least six months.
The high ‘sloe to gin’ ratio combined with this lengthy maturation process achieves a smooth, intensely rich and fruity flavour that retains some of that just-picked tartness.
They have worked closely with celebrated chef Romy Gill MBE to craft a gin that portrays the unique flavours of India, using herbs and spices commonly found in Indian cooking and infusing the ginwith the juice from the native mango. The recipe is inspired by the memoirs of Romy and strikes the perfect balance between rich fruity sweetness and reserved spice.
Got your taste buds tingling? Check out all of our gin collection here and don't forget to grab your ticket to our virtual tasting with 6 O'Clock taking place on 17th December.
Cheers!
