World Gin Day for 2020 falls on this Saturday and to celebrate Daily Addict got the chance to try two flavours of Singapore’s first craft gin their Tanglin Chilli Mandarin and their Orchid Gin. The very first thought we had was how stunning the bottles were! With a dark moody structural curved design, the front and back are sleek and sexy. Yet glancing through the underside of the labels we peek through to see bright vivid scenes of colour and movement. Always a sucker for packaging we were itching to open the gin as soon as we clamped eyes on them!
Their award winning gin – they were named the Best Traditional Gin 2020 by the highly regarded The Gin Guide Award in the UK and they took the prestigious Silver Award at The 2019 San Francisco World Spirits Competition – is the first Gin Distillery in Singapore! When chatting to the team we were happy to find that Tanglin Gin (like so many amazing ideas) came about over a drink! “The four founders, myself, Andy Hodgson, Charlie van Eeden and Chris Box – its like the beginning of a bad joke! A Pom, two Aussies and a Dutch guy walk into a bar…were enjoying a nice selections of gins at a Singapore roof top bar. The conversation gravitated to how it was odd Singapore didn’t have its own Gin given the explosion of the cocktail scene…and so the journey began, that was two years ago.” states Tim Whitefield, head distiller at Tanglin Gin.
After trying the complex, smooth, dare we say luxurious? Orchid gin we were hooked! With delicate citrus notes and bold personality the signature of the Orchid gin ( The National Flower of Singapore is an Orchid) is made from whole Vanilla beans, sourced from Indonesia. The gin also contains Malay Cassia, Indonesian Java Pepper, Liquorice from Europe, Coriander, Angelica Root, Amchoor and Juniper from Macedonia. The last important piece of the puzzle? “The Australian connection is whole organic oranges from my garden in Victoria” states Tim. Let me say, we at DA are fast fans.
Then on to the Mandarin Chilli Tanglin Gin. In a word? Mouthwatering. The chilli is light, subtle and mature and the delicate use of citrus and floral notes make for a perfect G&T. We tried ours with lemon and fresh cucumber slices and low sugar tonic and could not help ourselves going back for seconds (ok thirds… ok…. sixths). “For the Mandarin Chilli Gin we focus on the citrus nose. We finished the Gin with chilli and ginger to give the taste buds a lift with a slight tingle on the lips.” states Tim.
So we say celebrate World Gin Day in spirited (sorry had to) style, or, better yet, let’s make more days world gin days? Cheers to that!
