William Chase Seville Orange Gin with P G Wodehouse

Although they disappeared from off-licence and bar shelves something before my time, orange flavoured gins used to be popular. From what I've read I'm assuming they were fairly sweet and used mostly as a cocktail ingredient. William Chase's Seville Orange Gin is dry enough to satisfy the most traditional of gin drinkers (it certainly pleases me) but it too makes an excellent cocktail ingredient.

when I first tried it I was already familiar with, and a fan of, Chase's marmalade vodka, and that coupled with the glorious colour of this gin had led me to expect something aggressively orangey. It isn't at all, the orange flavour is there and it makes no bones about being the star of the show, but in many ways it's surprisingly subtle. The flavours are beautifully balanced and unmistakably gin like, albeit a citrus dominated gin, the end result was much more sophisticated than I expected and utterly contemporary - though the idea that it has a foot in gin history is pleasing too. 

It makes a brilliant gin and tonic, is excellent in a martini (I'd must try it in a breakfast martini* some day), and is worth trying in any citrus inclined gin cocktail - though it's such a good gin I don't like to mess around with it to much. It sings in a G&T and my cocktail making skills are limited.**

I'm not sure what Jeeves would make of this gin, I like to think it would be dry enough for him to approve of, but I'm certain that Bertie Wooster would love it, especially in a breakfast martini. That hint of marmalade could have been designed on purpose to compliment Wodehouse's world, a deckchair somewhere pleasant on a sunny afternoon with a glass of something involving this gin in one hand, and a book outlining why 'Aunts Aren't Gentleman' in the other, would be an afternoon well spent (and the stuff my dreams are made of). 

*which is in no way the same thing as having a martini for breakfast, that is something I have no intention of trying. Those days, if I ever had them, are long gone. 

** I've had occasional enthusiasms for trying to make cocktails at home, but experience has taught me to keep it simple and leave the business of serious cocktail making to professionals. It's less sticky that way.