A couple years later, there’s sweet cinnamon cake and pink pepper on the nose. Creamy and vanilla tinged, it’s absolutely endearing. It’s perhaps my favorite nose in all of the world of spirits. It’s light on juniper; however, there’s just something so captivating and so unusual about it. The first time I nosed this gin, I fell in love. I’m still in love all these years later. But as a gin critic, it’s worth pointing out that you may be surprised to find out this is a gin if you stopped at the nose. When I was in college, I studied Urban Planning. My senior year studio was in Newark, a mysterious place a PATH trip outside of New York— a place where millennials retired to have kids or live in sterile skyscrapers on the edge of the Hudson. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I just didn’t know Newark. The Ironbound neighborhoodod was a beautiful mess of diverse cultures, great food, interesting architecture— and now home of All Points West Distillery, makers of Cathouse Gin and Cathouse Pink Pepper Gin.

I find that when mixing with Cathouse Pink Pepper Gin the pink peppercorn and hibiscus notes becomes a bit more literal. The Gin and Tonic is light and floral. Don’t mix it with a flavored tonic water. A modicum of sweetness is also helpful for amplifying these notes. I like it best with a full-on sweet tonic water like Canada Dry or Scnweppes. Simply put, pink gin is made by macerating botanicals or fruit post-distillation with an otherwise colorless gin to obtain its signature pink hue.

Payne notes that Beefeater Pink Strawberry is inspired by Beefeater’s founder James Burrough's creative curiosity. “A pharmacist by trade before becoming a distiller, Burrough's wonderful inventions included raspberry gin, cherry brandy, British Brandy, [and more],” he explains. “Beefeater continues to embrace Burrough’s passion for colliding quality craftsmanship with experimentation and has created this natural strawberry gin for the new generation of drinkers.” Paye recommends using Beefeater Pink Strawberry to craft The Strawberry B&T by combining one part Beefeater Pink Strawberry with three parts of tonic over ice with fresh strawberries. If you’ve been drinking vanilla vodka or other creamy, evocations of confectioneries flavored vodkas** this gin might be the gin to bring you into the fold. It’s incredibly accessible to nearly anyone. The palate is intensely and delicately flavorsome with a lot of depth. I’d recommend this to anyone. Even if they weren’t a gin drinker.

But anyway, if you’re not afraid, come closer. The Tonka Bean is a beautiful flavor that imparts a captivating combination of vanilla, marzipan, caramel, dark honey and cinnamon bark. The LIVE virtual tastings are carried out in the last week of the month. Please keep an eye on our socials for confirmed dates! Fig trees grow abundantly all over France – adorning the edges of vineyards, sporadically appearing in the wild and taking pride of place in private gardens. At the start of springtime, fig trees plump their leaves with an aromatic sap; becoming richly green in colour, whilst wafting the deliciously heavy and sweet aromas of the sun-roasted leaf.

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Cathouse Pink Pepper Gin builds on it with an infusion of hibiscus and pink peppercorn. Tasting Notes To translate this aroma into flavour, we harvest the fig leaves during the brief period where they are at their most aromatic. They’re then air dried, lightly roasted by hand and finally transformed into this bright liqueur after adding just the two other aromatic ingredients, and a small amount of cane sugar to balance the sweetness.

Region: England | ABV: 41.4% | Tasting Notes: Strawberry, Orange blossom, Rose water, Pink peppercornIt was in the early days when we were bottling the first commercial batch of Pink Pepper Gin (regrettably called Batch No. II: Pepper Flip) that Uran, the head of the production line handed us the first bottle of the line for us to stamp it. At this moment we realised the importance of the people who made what we do possible. And it was at this moment we decided to dedicate every batch to someone important to us. Another contentious (at least in the United States) botanical in this gin is the Tonka Bean. It’s currently still banned stateside for a couple of reasons. The official one being that the beans from this South American tree contain a large quantity of coumarin (generally <3% of essential oil of bean by volume). The more probably reason for the ban of Tonka Beans specifically might be that it was a common adulterant used to deceive customers who thought they were buying vanilla. From a 1906 government report from the state of Connecticut, “The common adulterants of vanilla extract are tonka bean extract…tonka beans are much cheaper than vanilla beans and have a ranker flavor due to coumarin.” Fears of so-called “Mexican Vanilla” endures to this day, despite Mexico being one of the places vanilla grows naturally.