A marriage of the old and the new, Seventy One Gin is a stylish new spirit that’s begging for pride of place on your wet bar.
There’s no shortage of great new gins out there, but that doesn’t mean the market can’t be given a nudge in a new direction by the odd daring fellow, and Mert Alas, one half of acclaimed fashion photography duo Mert + Marcus, is just such a soul.
The photographer first began dabbling with the idea of a gin as an alternative creative outlet to his photography and decided to create a bold new gin in the same fashion as perfumes are made, with the individual botanicals distilled and then masterfully blended.
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The result is Seventy One, a gin named for the night in Rotterdam (the 71st to be exact) when the spirit – made in collaboration with master distiller Steve Wilson – was sampled from the oak casks in which it was maturing, and deemed perfect.
The result is an elegant spirit with touches of traditional and contemporary gin botanicals – juniper, Angelica, damask rose, lemon, cinchona, and grapefruit – that have been individually distilled using a range of techniques, including cold infusion, vacuum and copper pot distillation, and slow infusion.
These elements are then blended to create a gin that’s then aged in virgin Spanish and French oak casts before being spiked with a touch of the distillate of night-flowering cactus (we can sense you nodding your head in appreciation).
So what should you expect if you get your mitts on one of these refined gins? You’ll discover a distinctive sweetness on the nose, with touches of warm aromatics and a hint of vanillin from said cacti.
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The gin – which is caffeinated thanks to the use of guavas tea leaves – has a ripe, fresh green profile on the palate, ensuring an elevation to classic gin cocktails or an entirely new direction for that next gin martini.
Because sometimes it’s nice to stray from the path.
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