Drinks of the Month

Heston’s Lazy Sunshine Gin

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on September 9 2020 at 16:59

What to make of Heston’s Lazy Sunshine Gin, his latest collaboration with Waitrose?

Looks straightforward enough - a guy in a cricket sweater and a Panama sitting in a deckchair. Oh wait, it’s not a man it’s a BULLDOG. 'Course it is!

The 40% ABV gin is aromatised with juniper (has to be) and herbs (sweet basil, rosemary, thyme and lavender) so it's not *that* unusual but there’s a recommendation on the bottle to serve it with a drizzle of olive oil. OLIVE OIL. for goodness sake. Maybe this time Heston has finally gone too far.

Anyway I make it up as a G & T, using plenty of ice, Fevertree Mediterranean tonic as instructed and trickle over a little olive oil (the very posh Chianti Classico EVOO they sent with the bottle), drop in a nocellara olive and gingerly sip.

And you know what - it’s amazing. Really citrussy and herby (the botanicals miraculously accentuated by the oil which gives the whole drink a luscious viscosity without tasting remotely oily. As someone who’s got really bored with flavoured gins, especially fruit flavoured ones it’s a revelation. Not bad value either at £25 in store and from waitrosecellar.com. Many less interesting gins are more expensive than that.

Heston apparently says he was inspired to make the gin by the flavours of Provence so I'm thinking you could serve some Provencal snacks with it like tapenade, anchoiade (anchovy dip) and pissaladière.

The only problem is where’s the sunshine? Even though the weather forecast looks more promising over the next few days there’s already a bit of a chill in the air. You kind of feel they’ve missed the perfect moment to launch it (maybe the timetable slipped due to COVID) but it is delicous and a great bottle to show off to friends. Just drink it up before autumn sets in which really shouldn't be too hard.

I was sent the bottle as a press sample.

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