Fifty Pounds Gin, 70cl

Product Information

Allegedly one of Prince Edward’s favourite drinks, we’ve substituted vodka for the eminently more British gin. The perfect way to refresh after a raucous night at Balmoral.

Bermondsey Tonic Water (BTW) comes highly recommended. This concentrated tonic syrup has a well-balanced bitter-sweet flavour. With BTW the ideal ratio is 1:5 with carbonated water but also comes as a ready mixed tonic which gets its beautiful amber hue from the natural cinchona bark used to make it rather than quinine extract. Bermondsey Tonic has a beautiful amber hue. In terms of Fifty Pounds the challenge was to create a gin when, at the time it was launched, the gin market was going like a steam-train. The challenge was to actually break in and make a presence in that market. Fifty Pounds Gin has been extraordinarily successful in that and it’s now exported to something like 30 different countries around the world. As a small gin distiller I find it quite an achievement that I can go into bars, whether it be in Hong Kong, Colombia, USA, Spain, or Germany, and find them serving Fifty Pounds gin.Fifty Pounds Gin takes its name from one of the darkest times in Britain’s past and one of the most controversial in the history of Gin. When Dutch-born William of Orange took the English throne in 1688, England unwittingly (and unintentionally) began its descent into one of the first recorded drug epidemics – with Gin at the heart of it.

This is left to settle for no less than three weeks, which allows the botanicals’ essentials oils to blend perfectly with the grain spirit. The final step towards achieving our precious gin is to balance the distillate obtained with the same type of neutral alcohol, together with demineralised water, to achieve the perfect balance and alcohol content. Properly made gin and tonic, the way they do it in Spain - a long free-poured gin, lots of ice and a good garnish, topped up with tonic. The free pouring bit is important - you can’t live on a British measure, you can’t find it in the bottom of the glass. The gin should be about 25% of the liquid in the glass and then you get a really good drink. In the case of Fifty Pounds I think a little bit of orange peel or lemon peel really works brilliantly with it. The resulting bottle-ready gin has an alcohol content of 43.5% – the ideal percentage for drinking – whether neat, with tonic, or in a dry martini. A higher alcohol content risks distorting the combinations, while a lower percentage would rob the combinations of character.A Bloody Mary is vodka and tomato juice. A gin and tomato juice – a celebrated hangover cure years before the Bloody Mary became a thing – is known as a Red Snapper. In the role of just being “a gin,” Fifty Pounds didn’t astound. It had enough body to not disappear in a drink, but not enough character to lend a distinctive edge able to cut through several layered ingredients. It advertised itself as a traditional “London Dry,” but unlike something like the classic Tanqueray, it wasn’t a hard-charging Juniper bomb. “What’s it good for?” I thought to myself. This entire process takes around five hours at which point the liquid is split into three sections, the head, heart and tails. As mentioned above, we only use the heart. So: the story of the name. Feel free to read more on it if you’re curious, but here’s the lowdown: At one point during the early 1700s, Gin was basically the Fentanyl of England. Lax production laws meant that people were putting all sorts of adulterants into it to lower the price (sulfuric acid, anyone?), and in a well-publicized story, a woman literally killed her kid, sold his clothes, and bought gin with the proceeds.

The nose of Fifty Pounds Gin is lemon, lime, juniper, and very classic in character. Just a tinge of sweetness and creamy lemon as well. The nose is markedly lighter and clearer then the palate. Thankfully this passage in Gin’s sometimes dark history came to end and by 1756, sobriety and reason prevailed once more. Fifty Pounds Gin is named after this infamous Gin Act, but fortunately for us all, it’s not a recreation of a recipe from that era and is of much higher quality. Llanllyr Source Tonic Water – For traditional G&T serve, try Llanllyr Source Tonic Water. Its citrus notes work nicely with this classic juniper-strong gin, just garnish with a sprig of thyme and a lime wedge. Lime and sprig of Thyme In 2007 he created Fifty Pounds Gin, which was inspired in an earlier period of boom and bust for the spirit immortalised by Hogarth’s Gin Lane and Beer Street prints in the mid-18th century. I’m a great fan of Beefeater 24 Gin, I think it’s a superb gin and Desmond Payne (Master Distiller) did an amazing job when he created that. I also like straight Tanqueray Gin - I think it’s another really nice gin.This cookie is set by Rubicon Project to control synchronization of user identification and exchange of user data between various ad services. Fentimans Valencian Orange Tonic Water – Beautiful aromatic tonic water made with quinine, oranges and lemongrass. It pairs well with Fifty Pounds Gin – garnish with a sprig of thyme and orange zest. If you’re looking for a less aromatic G&T, try Fentimans Connoisseurs Tonic Water. Launched in 2010 and made at Thames distillery, Fifty Pounds Gin is made with a grain spirit base where the botanicals are steeped in this alcohol for at least two days, after which it is distilled. The exact botanical line is kept secret but thought to contain 11 in total. The first eight are relatively common - Juniper, angelica root, coriander, liquorice root, grains of paradise, lemon, orange rind and savoury. Interestingly, while savoury is less spoken about, it has become a part of quite a few gins in recent years, as it is a favoured botanical of Thames Master Distiller, Charles Maxwell (who also makes other gins for different owners). The three other botanicals are a fiercely kept secret although to taste our guess is that nutmeg and cassia bark seem likely candidates for two!