Tasting: Pothecary Trinity

I’ve been meaning to write this up for some weeks, but life, doing its thing, has been getting in the way. As such, I’m going to keep this fairly to the point, partly because this is a gin I really want people to know about.

Spoiler: The bottle is now nearly empty, so that should give you a clue as to my feelings if you can’t be bothered to read any further! Trinity is the latest release from the fine gentleman at Pothecary Gin and was kindly sent my way by Martin.

Trinity is a Gin. Note the capital G because this encapsulates everything I love about gin in it’s purest form and is something of an antithesis to all the distilled unicorn sweat and rainbow blended crap that seems to be flooding the market at the moment. We had my parents round for a drink a little while ago and my Dad asked for a “Ginny gin”. I went straight for the Trinity and as far as I know, it went down a storm. Pothecary blends their organic gins, distilling each botanical separately and then blending them in precise amounts to achieve the flavour they want. Trinity is aptly named as it includes only 3 botanicals: Juniper, coriander and bergamot. That’s it, nothing else to complicate things, just a classic gin that achieves what it sets out to do, and achieves it in stunning fashion.

Trinity is bottled at 49%, so it has a bit more of a kick than their original or Thai blends, but you don’t get nearly as much alcohol on the nose as you might expect. Instead, you just get at least one juniper berry shoved forcibly up each nostril with that lovely piney freshness you’d expect. Tasted neat, of course, you get the juniper up front, but more of the coriander carries through than you might expect from the nose, and ends with those lingering citrus notes from the bergamot. At 49%, it’s got a lovely warmth to it, that may be too much for some, but for me hits quite a sweet spot between the usual 38-40% and a navy strength gin, which can sometimes leave your eyes watering a little when tried neat. With a splash of light tonic, as you’d expect it open up rater, and you get more of that fragrant, citrusy bergamot coming to the fore to balance out the juniper.

In a Dry Martini, it does it’s thing again, the juniper at the fore, but with more of those citrus notes than you’d probably expect. The same applies to a Negroni (which was bloomin’ delicious by the way), and the bergamot lifts the bitter orange of the Campari up a bit, making it just that bit fresher. A nice wedge of grapefruit in there finished it off or me… several times.

There are a lot of classic profile gins that have been coming out lately, and while lots of them are very nice, it takes something special to take that classic flavour profile and lift it to another level, especially with only 3 botanicals! I always judge a bottle on whether I would buy it again, and I intend to have a bottle of this on my shelf at all times. So far, one of my favourite gins of the year. You can find more information on their website, and if you’re lucky enough to be headed to Junipalooza, make sure to stop by and try it on Stand #20!