Gemblue Barrel Gin

Juniper wood is not juniper berry. The timber carries a dry, resinousResinousAn aroma reminiscent of pine or fir resin. It is juniper's signature, due to compounds such as pinene.Glossary, almost incense-like character that the fruit never shows, and putting it inside a cask is a way of using the same plant twice in two different states. Wave Distil ages its standard Gemblue in cherry wood barrels infusedInfusionFruit or plants are steeped in the spirit to release their flavour. Done after distillation, infusion often adds colour too, and the gin can no longer be called London Dry.Glossary with it, bottles at 40%, and numbers each one by hand.

Woody · Dry · Spicy

Cherry wood is the second unusual choice. It is softer and less tannic than oak, so it colours a spirit gently and adds warmth rather than the vanilla and coconut a fresh oak cask delivers, and against that background the juniper woodJuniperThe one compulsory botanical: gin must taste predominantly of juniper. Its "berry" is really a small conifer cone, resinous and peppery.Glossary is clearly audible. The nose leads with wood directly, which is not how the unaged version behaves at all, followed by a dry touch of pepper and spice that the maturation has drawn out.

On the palate the attack is dry, wood and juniper landing at the same moment instead of one after the other, and the aftertaste is long and woody. Underneath it, the original recipe is still there: lime zest and cucumber, though both have moved from the front of the palate to somewhere considerably further back.

The producer's serving advice is unusually specific. A clementine-cinnamon tonic or an elderflower one both suit the wood better than a plain quinineQuinineAn alkaloid from cinchona bark that gives tonic its bitterness. The British in India drank it against malaria and added gin: the gin and tonic was born.Glossary, and stirring with a cocktail spoon rather than pouring hard preserves the carbonation, which matters more in a drink this dry. Neat with two or three cubes is the other route. Taking a three-botanical gin and putting it in wood is the sort of experiment that either works or ruins the recipe. Two woods and three botanicals leave very little to hide behind, which is why both cask choices had to be as specific as they are, and why the hand numbering is not just decoration. It ends woody, dry and peppery.