The gin didn’t ruin me mother
The weekend of April 16th -17th, saw Gin connoisseurs and novices, gather together for Nottingham’s first ever gin festival.
The baby of husband and wife team Jym and Marie Harris, Gin Festival.com is the original and biggest gun festival in town, showcasing over 100 different gins. 100! I’d never even tried gin, let alone knew there were so many.
So how did it work? If you’ve ever been to the beer festival, the concept is very similar (expect you’re in indoors in the contemporary setting of the Nottingham Conference Centre – they do it in style these gin drinkers) you begin by collecting your Gin Festival.co iconic copa glass, which you also get to take home with you (and unlike the beer festival glass, I actually managed to get this one home in one piece instead of waking up in the morning wondering why I’d bought a bag of broken glass home with me). Off you then pop to see a nice person at a desk to get your gin card market. It is stamped according to how much you pay ie how much gin you think you can manage.
So where does a gin novice begin? Do they take time to read through the issued ‘Gin Book’ and absorb the information within? Nah, they head to the nearest Bar and pick one they like the look of. I try the Pink Pepper. I’m not really sure why, other than it sounds girly. Garnished with pink grapefruit, it is served with a tonic. Described as a “totally unique, intense and aromatic gin” at 44% it hits me like a large pink truck. I’m unsure if I like the flavour as I’m more concerned about what the future holds in terms of navigating the stairs to see what delights await at the lower level. Our ‘Gin Book’ also advises us this particular gin plays upon ‘France’s perfumery associations’, and to be honest, I can imagine it is what Kylie’s ‘Darling’ perfume might taste like it drank.
I sip as I flick through our indispensable Gin Book. The book has a beginners guide, a ‘how to’ make the perfect G & T, as well as tasting notes. I decide it might be a good time to descend those stairs, after all, going upstairs is easier than going downstairs after a few too many, right? Downstairs we hunters and gatherers find food. A stall called The Striped Pig, offering all manner of burgers tempts us, as does the survival instinct to line our stomachs. We try a turkey burger and a veggie burger, honestly one of the nicest veggie burgers I think I have tried.
Rejuvenated, we study the oracle which is The Gin Book and plan an attack. We got into this Gin malarkey and discovered they don’t actually all taste like perfume. As the Gin flowed, I am happy to report that some of my favourites were Ely Chocolate Orange Gin, described as ‘sumptuous and seductive’, at 30% this one was really rather nice. Being a bit of a chocolate fiend, another favourite was the Ely Dark Chocolate Gin, another one at 30% and has all the right adjectives in our bible – The Gin Book, such as delectable, special and luxurious – and they’re not wrong.
Gin munches set in big style, so it was back to The Striped Pig. This time a cup of pork scratchings were in order. We rounded the night of sipping on our Gins (pretending we knew what we were doing), crunching on our scratchings and enjoying the live music from Holder and Smith, a duo who were also apparently magicians who entertained the crowd throughout the night. Perhaps they’d like to see my trick where I make Gin disappear.
For more information on future events visit: www.ginfestival.com
By Tanya Raybould
Editor
