Cambridge Seasonal Gin - Spring/Summer 2015

Gin description

Spring / Summer 2015 started with great promise. We basked in sunshine during the Boat Race, which at least took the edge off the disappointment of watching the other place claim victory in all three races, and temperatures regularly exceeded 20 degrees Celsius in the daytime, with blue skies and warm breezes bringing temperatures higher than Athens into the second week of April. All of this provided perfect conditions for our early spring blossoms. We collected mahonia, viburnum and violet in the first week of April, then cherry and hawthorn blossom until the 25th. An overnight downpour marked the end of cherry blossom picking, but the beginning of apple blossom followed just a few days later. May was disappointing; with temperatures 2 degrees lower than average for the time of year, resulting in a slow end to what began as a very promising season. Early June provided enough warmth to provide us with plenty of lemon verbena from the gardens here, allowing us to capture the cool, crisp profile we aim for in the Spring / Summer blends. SS15 has focussed on the floral notes from earlier in the year: mahonia has a divine rose-like quality, hawthorn and cherry blossom slightly more robust- these flavours work particularly well when sweetened slightly with tonic. Only sixty bottles are available – via Selfridges – to the public in the U.K, with a further 24 reserved for Cambridge Distillery Alumni.