Blackwood's Vintage Dry Gin

Product of: United Kingdom

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Blackwood's Vintage Dry Gin is made on Scottish mainland using hand-harvested Shetland botanicals. Other gins strive for consistency year by year but Blackwood’s allows the flavour to slightly vary so specifies the year the Shetland botanicals were gathered, ‘the vintage’, on the bottle’s label.

Shetland’s local crofters gather wild botanicals and these are distilled with botanicals imported from around the world: juniper berries from Umbria, lemon and orange peels, cassia bark, liquorice root, ground nutmeg, cinnamon bark and orris root.

Aroma:

(sample bottle 2017 harvest with Meadowsweet, Cowslip, Wild Thyme and Eyebright) Crystal clear.

Taste:

Piney juniper forward with grassy, herbal vanilla, floral and creamy citrus aromas.

Aftertaste:

Black pepper spiced piney juniper leads to fairly classic dry gin palate with a herbal note and citrus freshness.

Overall:

If this wasn’t the first “vintage gin” it was certainly one of the first. Over the years the gin has much improved and we very much like this 2017 vintage, although it is arguably quite juniper forward classic London dry in style with the handpicked Shetland botanicals reduced to a supporting role – but surely that’s what makes this a properly good gin.