Empress 1908 Gin’s Cool as a Cucumber cocktail
Juniper berry: the herbaceous and aromatic “fruit” of the cypress tree is the only ingredient required to classify a spirit as gin. Beyond that, gin provides a beautiful and boozy blank slate for distillers to impart their creativity, from herbs, flowers, and fruits to more unexpected and exotic ingredients.
Take these five unique gins: one is infused with prized pink and white strawberries from Japan. Another showcases botanicals that were hand-foraged from the only UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in Wales. And the addition of an all-natural indigo-colored ingredient in another means that the gin actually changes color when mixed with popular cocktail ingredients like tonic water or citrus.
Read on to learn more about these unique gins that you’ll want to sip all summer long.
Indigo-colored Empress 1908 Gin
The intense indigo color of Empress 1908 Gin nearly jumps off the shelves. Handcrafted by Victoria Distillers on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, this small-batch spirit is made with eight lively botanicals, including black tea, grapefruit, and cinnamon bark.
The spirit comes by its vibrant shade of blue naturally, thanks to the addition of butterfly pea blossom. Add tonic water, citrus, or other cocktail mix-ins, and watch closely as the color shifts from indigo to soft lavender or pink.
Try it in a Cool as a Cucumber cocktail (pictured above).
Awayuki Strawberry Gin
Many brands have tried — and failed — to capture the sweet and delicate taste of strawberries, but too often the taste comes off as cloying or artificial. That’s not the case with this flavored gin from strawberry-obsessed Japan, a country where it’s common to see boxes of prized pink and white varieties of the berries sold for astronomical prices.
Infused with Awayuki, white pearl, and Kotoka berries grown in Japan’s Nara Prefecture, the pure flavors of the aromatic fruit marry beautifully with the juniper and other botanicals.
Dyfi Welsh Gin is crafted with foraged botanicals from the only UNESCO certified World Biosphere … [+]
Similar to how wines are a product of a vineyard’s terroir, so can gins express the landscapes of the regions in which they’re made. Dyfi Distillery crafts its premium gin with 28 unique botanicals, most of which are hand-foraged in Dyfi Valley — the only UNESCO certified World Biosphere Reserve in Wales.
For ten and a half months of the year, brothers Pete and Danny Cameron forage for wild ingredients throughout the Welsh countryside. The result is a sophisticated, modern riff on a classic London Dry gin with the nuanced flavors and aromas including foraged crab apple, elderberry, red clover, nettle, bilberry, birch, rose hips, and hawthorne.
Brazilian-born McQueen and the Violet Fog gin
The U.K. produces the majority of the world’s gins. But McQueen and the Violet Fog, which is distilled and bottled in the hills of Jundiaí, Brazil, sets itself apart from the rest with a unique blend of 21 botanicals, including lemongrass, pomelo peel, orris root, and jasmine flower.
Distilled in a traditional copper still with a sugarcane base, the citrus-forward spirit nabbed double gold at the 2022 NY Wine and Spirits Competition.
For its tropica Ultraviolet Edition, the distiller adds the flavors of berries and hibiscus blossoms to their flagship gin to create an attention-grabbing purple formulation that changes color when combined with tonic water or citrus.
Try it in a Blood Orange Paloma.
Feather & Folly Gin
Hailing from Washington state’s wine country, this copper pot distilled gin is handcrafted with grapes from Goose Gap AVA in the Columbia River Valley. In addition to juniper berries, this complex spirit is infused with orange zest — plus lesser-known botanicals like angelica, coriander, licorice root, and black lime.
Try it in a Blueberry French 75.
