Gin tasting @ Bath Christmas market!

Last week was the inaugral Hughes’ parent Christmas party in Bath, and it coincided with the last weekend of the Bath Christmas Market.

Those of you who follow me on twitter will have seen the numerous tweets and photos from the weekend, but for everyone else here it is:

Me, holding my invisible champagne glass, outside the traditional Christmas market stalls decorated with little lights and fir boughs.

The Christmas market is quite large, spread over several streets centred around the Abbey square. There was a carousel for the children and lots of different carol singers dotted around. Although we didn’t make it to all the stalls we made it to the ones that counted – the Gin ones!

The first place we headed was to the Edinburgh Gin stall 🙂

Normally the sheep don’t drink the sheep dip…. this lamb obviously loves whisky

A pyramid of Edinburgh Gin

So Spencerfield Spirits, the makers of Edinburgh Gin, also make the Sheep Dip and Pig’s Nose whiskys. It is common for whisky makers to also make gin, as a legal requirement for making whisky is minium 3 years aging, when you first set up that means 3 years without sales… unless you make a gin which doesn’t have this requirement.

Now I do love Edinburgh gin for their infusions. These are similar to Mother’s Ruin fruit liqueurs in that they are only 20% alcohol, rather than being ‘gin strength’ 37-40%. This means they are easily sipped on their own – although I would recommend some ice!

My new favourite is the Rhubarb & Ginger, which has a great balance between the tartness of the rhubarb and spicey ginger. The Hughes parents served this up as a potent cocktail topped up with prosecco.

Partying in style! Lots of prosecco 🙂

The flatmate and I stocked up with several bottles, and then tried their Christmas gin. This is special as the botanticals include frankincense and myrrh, however I’m not sure I could taste them without a control sample of their normal gin! It was a lovely gin though, given that we tried it neat that’s always a good sign!

Next up we headed to Dá Mhìle – a Welsh gin and whisky distillery. They had obviously had a very good run at the market as they were completely sold out of sample or half size bottles. I tried their Seaweed gin, which is exactly as it says – flavoured with seaweed, which gives it a green tinge – specially formulated to go well with seafood. I thought it was alright, again not sure I could taste the seaweed, the lady next to me preferred their botantical gin, which has a more floral flavour.

Finally we completed the gin crawl around the market at the Bath gin stall!

I love the winking Austen!

Bath gin weren’t offering tastings – probably as you could easily walk around the corner to the Canary and buy a G&T or martini! But as you can see they had lots of present ideas.