5 Gintastic Years of The Oliver Conquest

As my favourite gin pub in London, the Oliver Conquest, was celebrating its fifth birthday last week, they decided to hold a gin tasting and masterclass for their own bespoke gin:

The Oliver Conquest bespoke gin made by Gin Foundry – special tea blend.

Gin Club with a Reading Problem decided to come along to taste it (well free tastings are always popular!)

Our special reserved table! ?

We started out with the OC gin and tonic – recommended serve with orange and Rose buds, and FeverTree tonic (obviously!). The first flavour to hit me on tasting with tonic, was the cardamom – one of my favourite gin botanicals.

Then Olivier from Gin Foundry started to take us through the distillates that represent the main botanicals for the OC gin.

(once he’s started you can’t shut him up, only joking! But this did leave Emile from Gin Foundry with the main task of handing out drink samples!).

We started off with two similar distillates (that’s single botanicals distilled on their own), fresh orange and dried orange peel. What a difference fresh versus dry makes!! I’ve known about this as a choice to make when deciding on your botanicals for gin, but never tried the two different botanicals separately to them being in a gin – such an interesting start to the tasting!

We then sampled coriander, angelica, green cardamom, and the special tea blend used in the OC gin. The special tea distillate includes black tea, plus rose petals and hibiscus (my favourite distillate along with the cardamom).

Then finally we tried the OC gin neat ?, this would make a great martini! Olivier explained that they blend all the separate distillates together to make the gin – each batch is slightly different – so it’s not a London Dry style (you have to distill all the botanicals together for that designation).

Olivier can geek out a lot on any topic relating to gin – so his talk wandered from hand picked juniper berries “bullshit! No one hand picks!” to how to get your distillates ‘we use a rotovap’ (a piece of laboratory equipment for preparing distillates), to which botanicals different gin brands use, and of course the history that inspired the OC gin:

The pub used to be called the Garrick and opened in 1831 – so drawing inspiration (or should that be ginspiration!) from the events occurring at the same time – Earl Grey in parliament and he and his wife inspiring tea parties with their own personalised tea blends. This was the inspiration for the tea influence in OC gin.

Olivier also elaborated on the iterative nature of creating a bespoke gin – I know from Sara Jane that they went through several versions before agreeing one that would work across the full range of drinks. Whilst the initial versions tasted great on their own – it generally only tends to be gin lushes that drink gin neat! Sara Jane wanted something with a depth of flavour that would stand up to having tonic with it and would also work well in different cocktails:

We also tried an OC Negroni – lovely glasses and delicious cocktail! (OC gin with Antica Formula and Campari)

Which brings me nicely to the new venture Aperitivo, upstairs at the OC Weds- Friday every week in November.

This is a little piece of Italy in East London! They are serving Classic Italian inspired cocktails, like the Negroni, with an Oliver Conquest twist. Even better the drinks come with nibbles such as Parma ham, cheese, figs and bruschetta.

They are also doing special distillers tables – featuring a different distiller in an informal atmosphere. Basically you chat to them about the gin whilst drinking cocktails and eating your Italian snacks – £25 including food and two cocktails, pre booking required to guarantee a spot.