Cucumber Premium Gin is the full vicar’s tea party
Have you ever felt that wave of resentment when, a week or so after buying something, the retailer suddenly starts advertising it at a heavy discount? Well thanks to the noble honesty of Majestic Wines’ marketing people I’m looking at a refund voucher for £17.57, sent to me because they’d reduced the price on some Chilean red after we purchased it from their Exeter outlet. However, because the store also allows you to taste various vintages and spirits before you buy, I definitely won’t be spending the money on the English Drink Company’s Cucumber Premium Gin.
During our last trip to Majestic, when we picked up our bottle of Silent Pool, I had a smallish snifter of several different gins on the tasting counter, including the aforementioned cucumis sativus concoction. And I am afraid I have to inform you it is the full vicar’s tea party – with the crusts cut off.
“Sorry, to me it tastes like a thinned down cucumber smoothie, which doesn’t even reveal any juniper.”
Now I’m not saying it’s a bad gin: it undoubtedly deserves the ‘Premium’ tag, having earned a Silver medal at the 2016 ISWC competition, and has a large following. But despite the fact I love cucumber as a garnish to a cheese sandwich, and we grow a greenhouse full of them every summer, I simply find this gin’s flavour overpowering. Unlike the Watercress based Twisted Nose we reviewed early on in this blog, my palate just can’t decode the other tastes apparently lurking.
Trying to avoid this Cucumber Premium Gin review being of courgette length, I went searching for opinions other than the maker’s view that “The cucumber’s sweetness subtly compliments the vibrant botanical ingredients”. I finally came across a solitary comment from one David K, who reported there are “distinctive subtle flavours – brings summer days a bit closer!”
No sorry, to me it tastes like a thinned down cucumber smoothie, which doesn’t even reveal any juniper. But there are plenty of people apart from Majestic knocking out this 40%distillation for around £35 a bottle; so once again it must be my problem with sweet drinks generally.
GINblogger definitely still needs a millennial correspondent to cover the saccharin sector of the gin spectrum.
