Renais Gin

Upcycled wine grapes from Burgundy are the base, and a distillate of kimmeridgian stone is the detail that makes this bottle genuinely unusual. Renais Spirits sources the grapes, distils in England, and builds the recipe around juniper, angelica root, coriander seed, cubeb berries, linden flowers, lemon peel, lime slices and acacia honey, bottling at 40% ABV. It was awarded Gold at The Spirits Business Gin Masters in 2023 and again in 2024.

Citrus · Floral · Fruity · Herbal · Earthy

The grape shows early and clearly, giving a fruit character that no grain-based gin produces on its own: rounder, softer, with a vinous quality sitting behind it. Citrus follows and is doubled, lemon peel supplying the sharp oily top and whole lime slices a fuller, more bitter fruit underneath. Linden flowers bring the floral register, delicate and honeyed, and the acacia honey extends that impression without leaving the gin sweet. Cubeb berries add a dry peppery prickle that stops the fruit becoming soft, and angelica with coriander seed holds the classical base in place beneath all of it. Then the mineral note arrives at the end, faint and stony, and it is the thing you remember: dry, almost saline, quite unlike anything a botanical alone would give.

That minerality deserves protecting. Stick to a plain tonic, poured long over ice, and keep the finish narrow: a twist of lemonTwistA strip of peel twisted over the glass to release its oils, then dropped into the drink.Glossary, or a thin slice of lime to track the recipe. There is no case for adding a flower on top of the ones already distilled into it. It is genuinely worth a first glass poured neat and barely chilled, because the stone distillate is the easiest element for a mixer to erase entirely. It closes citric, floral and mineral, the stony note still there once the fruit has cleared.