first posted 30 August 2017)
As it has been approximately one million years since my last Middle Class Gin Review, I thought it was high time to set one off. This time, I’m reviewing Sibling gin, given to me a little while ago by my, er, sibling.
This is actually a surprisingly fruity gin, and very easy drinking. At least, it is when served with greengage and a couple of cardamom pods. It has a very sweet finish – it almost tastes like I’ve mixed in some simple syrup, which I haven’t. I think my next garnish for it will be a gooseberry or two. In fact, my middle-class meal accompaniment would be a gooseberry fool, as it is definitely a dessert gin.
Thinking about it a bit more, my next one might be a gimlet made, not as Terry Lennox describes in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, but as he laments the concoction he and Philip Marlowe are presented with:
‘We sat in the corner bar at Victor’s and drank gimlets. “They don’t know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”‘
Ordinarily, Chandler is cock-on with his cock-tails. However, I strongly suspect that with Sibling gin, Victor (of Victor’s bar, where our hardboiled private dick is drinking with Mr Lennox) has the superior mix.
It just so happens that I stocked myself up tonight with fresh limes, and I think I can probably retrieve some mint from the garden. A variation of a Victor’s Bar gimlet, coming up next.