#46 Attend a Gin Tasting

While lock-down 3 continues, visiting gin distilleries cannot really be considered an essential journey, so a couple of Saturdays ago I joined a gin tasting hosted by The Virtual Tasting Company.

The featured distillery was The Isle of Skye Distillers and for about £30 I was sent three 5 centilitre bottles of gin, three bottles of tonic water and a Zoom link.

On the night of the tasting I set myself up with my three glasses of ice, well chilled tonics and the recommended garnishes, laptop and nibbles.


As you can see from the "before" photo here, it was all very civilised at this point. A good number of us joined the virtual tasting along with two facilitators from The Virtual Tasting Company and one of the distillery owners from The Isle of Skye Distillers.

We tasted their most popular gin, Misty Isle Cill Targhlain first, which is distilled using wild foraged botanicals from the island. We then progressed to their amazing EnGineering gin, which is usually exported to mainland Europe and not available in the UK but the current Brexit situation is making exporting it quite tricky at present. Finally we enjoyed their experimental gin, distilled just for the participants that evening, which they called Fairy Glen and which contained banana among other botanicals!

By the third double I was having a lovely party at my own kitchen table and I don't remember much of the Zoom call from then on if I'm honest. My housemate took a great photo of me after the call had finished which I think sums up how much I enjoyed the evening.


Towards the end of the night there was a competition to win a bottle of the Misty Isle Cill Targhlain. We had to guess the weight of the juniper berries used in an average bottle. I guessed 17g, a number I pretty much plucked from the misty haze of my drunkenness, but which turned out to be closest to the correct answer of 20g! So yesterday I received this wonderful prize in the post.

It was the most fun I have had alone at my kitchen table since this pandemic began, so I would definitely sign up for another tasting in the future.

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