Tarquin's Figgy Pudding Gin

After a four-year hiatus, Tarquin's Figgy Pudding Gin is back, built to recall the flavours and the table-side spectacle of a flaming figgy pudding. Southwestern Distillery, the family-run Cornish producer established in 2012, takes Tarquin's Cornish Dry GinDry ginGin with no perceptible sweetness: in the European Union, the word "dry" allows at most 0.1 g of sugar per litre.GlossarySee Dry gin gins as the base and infuses it with dried figs, fresh clementine zest and festive spice botanicals.

Citrus · Spicy · Fruity

The flame comes in through the wood. Cherrywood chips are soaked in brandy, then blow-torched before they join the infusionInfusionFruit 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, bringing a toasted warmth to the fruit. The nose mixes dried fruit and spice with candied clementine.

On the palate, toasted spice meets aromatic juniper and ripe fig, the juniper of the Cornish base keeping the fruit from feeling heavy, and the finish recalls sticky fig jam and caramelised honey, with a festive warmth that lingers.

Each bottle is filled, waxed and stamped by hand, and holds 70 cl at 42% ABV. For a Figgy Ginger, fill a highballHighballA long drink served in a tall, straight glass with plenty of ice: a spirit topped with soda or tonic. The word also names the glass.Glossary with ice, pour in 5 cl gin and 10 cl ginger ale, stir gently and garnish with an orange wedge and a fresh thyme sprig. The ginger ale picks up the spice, the orange points back to the clementine, and the thyme adds a herbal edge against the fig. Neat or long, it belongs at the end of a winter meal, where the pudding itself would be served.