©Marian Delyth
Jon Gower
In Bernard MacLaverty’s latest novel Midwinter Break the central character Gerry finds himself paralysed by the choice of gins in a bar in Amsterdam.
I know how he feels. Walking into one of the gin joints that have sprouted on the Welsh high street such as Juniper Place in Swansea or Gin and Juice in Cardiff is to become a child in a sweet shop, albeit a bit of an alcoholic one. Like one of the kids in Fagin’s gang in Oliver Twist who were sadly only too partial to a gin snifter or four. Top of my list of OTT gin palaces of the world is Whitechapel in San Francisco which boasts the biggest selection of gins in North America. Crazily atmospheric, it’s been designed to look like a cross between a derelict version of the London tube station and the inside of a gin still, so that there are pipes bubbling greenish liquids coming through broken tiles on the walls. The cocktail menu here includes a dark and fearful paean to the demons of drink, by Thomas Hood, written in the gin heyday of 1847: Gin! Gin! A drop of Gin! What magnified monsters circle therein! Ragged, and stained with filth and mud, The cocktail list at Whitechapel is a lavish affair. One will suffice. The “Hungry Monk of East Sussex” is made with Spirit Works Private Barrel Gin, bourbon, Giffard banana liqueur, Oloroso sherry, salted bruleé and cinnamon bitters. Other uncommon ingredients on the list include cold brew coffee, black cherry coke reduction, pink pepper bitters and Serrano chillies. The same abundance of flavours is evident this side of the pond, with gins that are juniper forward, rhubarb inflected, some made with marmalade, mulberry and even ones made with Cape gooseberries or Kalahari truffles. Gin has come a long way since it was considered mother’s ruin, laying waste to generations in the rookeries of Dickensian London. It is now so on-trend you might be forgiven for asking what’s coming next. And of course Welsh gin makers are adding their own flavours to the array on offer from the rhubarb gins of
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www.taste-blas.co.uk
Anglesey through to the seaweed ones of west Wales to south Wales’ distillers who engage a range of flavours from violets to blue ginger. In light of such choice anxiety it’s possible to take a road less travelled now and plump for making your own sloe gin, from the fruit of the blackthorn tree. I have a favourite spot for picking sloes, near Penarth – not far from the place where Marconi sent the first wireless message back in 1897. While it’s traditional to wait until after the first frost I cycled there to pick sloes on one of those days of intense October sun when the whole world seems silvery. The berries glinted and gleamed and I wove my hands through the sharp thorns to reap the black harvest. Sloes, known in Welsh as eirin duon bach (small black berries), eirin tagu (choking berries) due to their innate bitterness or simply eirin perthi (hedge berries), have long been collected and used in Wales, and not just in gin. Sloes, boiled with sugar and water, were used medicinally to treat “laxity of the bowels.” The syrup would be made in the autumn and used in the winter, when hot water would be poured over it before being given to the patient. My grandmother, Bess, used to make sloe gin and I’d love to tell you I use her recipe but I’m afraid my route to sloe gin success is a bit more generic. Take a litre of gin, from any discount supermarket and about 450g of washed sloes. Put these in the freezer overnight and hey presto, you have your own version of a first frost, splitting the skins so that the juice flows freely. Put these in in a sterilized jar or any empty gin bottle lying around behind the sofa, sprinkle with 225g of caster sugar, seal tightly, shake well and then shake again every other day for a week. After the first week you need only do this once a week for about 2 months. It’s therapeutic in itself mind. Then, as they say, drink responsibly. Else those “creatures, scarce human” that Thomas Hood warned about will certainly come a calling. Chin chin.
