Glendalough Wild Botanical Irish Gin 700 mL 41 Percent ABV
FRESH FROM THE WILD
To make this extraordinary gin, we forage wild plants in the mountains around the distillery. What we pick goes fresh into the still within hours of foraging.
All the plants are sustainably picked by our full time forager, every day we distil. We take a lot of care that we don’t adversely affect the areas we find them in. That means sometimes using scissors rather than picking to make sure roots aren’t pulled, or maybe skipping a few before picking the next one, or finding different patches of the same plant, to make sure an area isn’t over-foraged.
Our aim is to leave no trace that we were ever there. It’s harder work but worth it to keep the mountains beautiful and wild.
Then these wild botanicals are painstakingly slow-distilled to tease out delicate flavours, in very small batches of less than 250 liters. Some go in the pot, and some are hung in a basket to let vapours extract their essential oils. The cut-points are decided batch by batch, by smell and taste (never timed or automated) as if each batch is the first.
This brings the flavour our Wild Gin to a whole other level. The knowledge, experience and man-hours in each bottle are what make this liquid so special.
TASTING NOTES
Top-notes of grapefruit and pine-y juniper. A helping of heather and rose petal.
(by The Chaps at Master of Malt)
masterofmalt.com
Glendalough Rose Irish Gin 700 mL 37.5 Percent ABV
FRESH, FLORAL AND FLAVOURFUL
To make this very special, small-batch Gin we completely rebalance our Wild Gin recipe and redistill it with extra fruit, flowers, spices… and of course a lot of fresh rose petals.
Three varieties of rose are used; the rare and elusive Wild Rose from the Wicklow mountains, large fragrant Heritage Roses and the ancient prized Damask Rose. All of which come together to make this a naturally pink and very floral gin.
Given the delicate nature of petals as an ingredient, this gin is distilled even slower and more gently than our wild botanical gin with vapour distillation playing a bigger part in extracting those essential oils and flavours.
After distilling, it is further infused with even more roses to deepen the flavours and of course the lovely pink hue.
This is not “just another pink gin”, far from it. The depth and complexity really needs to be tasted to be understood. Floral, fragrant and flavourful, it is some of the best, most interesting gin we’ve made and comes after a lot of experimenting with plants, fruit, spices and flowers.
TASTING NOTES
Fresh flowers and fragrant juniper sweetness, blended by orange oil sharpness cutting through. A hint of liquorice slowly appears.
(by The Chaps at Master of Malt)
masterofmalt.com