The Wild Drink Blog

Yesterday was the first ever Plymouth Gin competition and I was a competitor, unfortunately I didn’t win!The competition was held at the world famous Blackfriars distillery in Plymouth which is the oldest working distillery in England. Blackfriars was formerly home to the Blackfriar Monks when it was built around the early 1400s and the building famously gave the Pilgrim fathers a sofa to sleep on on their last night in England before setting sail on the Mayflower to what would would eventually be the US of A.They’ve been producing spirits at Blackfriars since before the turn of the 18th Century and gin specifically for about 230 years upon the arrival of Mr Coates the founder of Plymouth Gin.

Plymouth Gin is unique since it is a style of gin in itself and Plymouth Gin (the brand) is the only Plymouth style of gin currently produced. The Plymouth style differs to London dry, the most commonly found style, in a few ways: a/ Only sweet botanicals are used to flavour the gin. b/ The flavour is more citrus driven rather than juniper. b/ Plymouth gin has to be made within the walls of Plymouth - London can be, and is, made anywhere.Back to the competition. The competition involved three rounds done on a knock out basis (we’ll come back to that pretty quickly) with the last round being the final three bars. In round one we were told that we had 10 minutes to think of a classic gin cocktail that we would sell to a customer who had not really tried gin before.Now, before we go any further, I should say that my knowledge of classic gin cocktails is pretty good but not as good as it used to be. Back in the day I obsessed over classics and the lists I wrote were comprised almost entirely of perfectly balanced classics made as they were 80 years ago. These days however i’m far more into mixology and creating my own drinks, my current cocktail list has only 4/5 classics on it and about 20 original drinks. So i’m actually a bit more rusty that I originally thought.I chose to make a Singapore Sling which is a lovely long drink consisting of gin, cherry brandy and fruit juices, aromatised with Angostura bitters. In hindsight this was a bit of a mistake as I over complicated it for myself and the bars that got through all made simple classics with very little room to go wrong. My fault, lesson learnt. I was still quite suprised that I didn’t get through, I did a good job of explaining why Plymouth works so well in a Sling and my presence was good, it was clear that the competition was tough though.

So with me knocked out the other competitors moved onto the speed round, three classic gin cocktails - French 75, White Lady, Gin & Tonic as quickly as possible. This left the three finalists as Raoul’s (from Oxford), Harry’s Bar and Monkey Bars (yes that’s right, the organisers of the last competition I entered). Each bar made two original drinks based around… yep, you guessed it, Plymouth Gin. The guy from Raoul’s did a great julep served in a Plymouth gin tin, and Rachel from Monkey bars did an extremely nice drink with coriander in that actually tasted healthy, reminded me a bit of my Mar-Thai-Ni .In the end Rachel from Monkey Bars was victorious with Raoul’s in second place. Rachel bagged herself £500 which is pretty good going so congratulations to her. Monkey Bars are doing the bar at my wedding next year so i’m confident that they can keep up now!

Despite being unfairly kicked out of the first round, i’m not a bad loser and the event was a great chance to chat with fellow bartenders and there were a few familiar faces which was nice. I even got a chance to make my Gin & Tonic signature drink with tonic water made on a stove in 5mins!