Tasting Notes: Secret Garden Christmas Gin (December Subscription)

Ahoy and Season’s Greetings! 

This month I steered the Nautilus up the North Sea, before docking at Edinburgh to pick up this month’s cargo. The story behind the Secret Garden Distillery is delightful. In 2012 Hamish and Liberty Martin bought a 7.5 acre plot on derelict land on the city’s outskirts. As a herbologist, it was Hamish’s intention to use the land to grow herbs and so the Secret Herb Garden was born. It was never their intention to use the botanicals to create gin but I’m grateful they did. Secret Garden Gins are about as natural and organic as it’s possible to get. They don’t use pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals, and all the plants, herbs and flowers that end up in their gin are harvested by hand.

Since they started distilling in 2018, they have created multiple award-winning varieties. Their distilling method is to steep the juniper berries in the alcohol and allow the vapourised alcohol to pass through the other botanicals before condensing. The gin that has found its way to you is from their Christmas range. I urge you to try it neat first so you can recognise the flavours when you add your mixer.

For the new shipmates, I’ll explain the typical method for tasting gin. It’s divided into three stages - nose, palate and finish. First bring the glass to your nose. The trick is not to sniff or the alcohol will be overpowering, but just to smell the vapours as they naturally work their way up. For the palate and the finish it’s a matter of noticing how it tastes in your mouth and how that flavour transforms as you swallow it.

When I tried this exquisite treat, I found juniper and cinnamon to be the dominant elements in the nose. On the palate, the spiciness of the ginger became more apparent and there’s an earthiness from angelica root. The finish is smooth with those spices still being present.

Some have said that on the palate there’s hints of Christmas cake. I didn’t find it but everyone’s palate is different so perhaps you will? Since it’s the season of goodwill I have packed extra treats this month. For mixers you’ll find some light tonic and a ginger ale. You’ll appreciate the gin more with the tonic but the ginger ale pairs beautifully with it as well. There’s a clementine to cut into chunks for garnish. The clementine comes courtesy of A Small Good Thing, a wonderful organic green grocers based near Bolton. 

There’s also a delicious box of gin creams, the result of a collaboration between the nominally similar but otherwise unconnected Whitakers Chocolates and Whittaker’s, a Yorkshire-based craft distillery.