Curious Gin
Curious Gin :40%ABV
Botanicals: 14 unspecified but including juniper, orange, cucumber, Spanish almond, cassia, cinnamon, coriander and anise.
Flavour profile: juniper
Garnish:
Here at Ginman Towers, we had a blind tasting recently which included Curious Gin, a little number I recently picked up in New York at considerable expense. When the identity of the gin was revealed post-tasting, one wag opined ‘the only curious thing about that gin is why they made it in the first place’. A touch harsh, I thought, so I resolved to do a full review of the Catskill-origin gin.
Curious Gin uses New York grain and Catskill mountain water plus 14 unspecified botanicals that the distillers claim to be ‘exotic’. The stated aim of the gin was to be mellow, for people who believe that they ‘don’t like gin’. Curiouser and curiouser…
On the nose, a touch of juniper, joined by sweet citrus and herbs.
If the smell reminded me of old-fashioned sherbet lemon sweets, the throwback to my youth theme was continued when I tasted it; bubblegum and aniseed balls, with citrus and juniper, and a touch of pepper and herbs.
Searching for a word to describe Curious Gin I came up with ‘un-involving’ (although Mrs Gin was more opinionated on the matter, declaring it as tasting like ‘bad schnapps’). There was little depth and I felt it fell between the stools of a classic juniper-dominant gin and a more ‘exotic’ contemporary gin. Nice try, but it will not be adorning Theginman’s shelf.
