
It’s the festive party season. A time of sequins, paper hats and nibbly things on sticks. A time to gather your friends together to make merry in the lambent glow of the Christmas tree. A time to risk your soft palate by playing microwaved mince pie roulette. And a time to rinse out the expensive looking empty bottles of gin and decant something much more cost-effective into them. Because, given the rate at which British people drink, who can afford to dole out the fancy stuff?
This year I have been blessed by the gin fairies at Aldi, the Teutonic purveyor of lookey-likey bargain groceries. They sent me a bottle of their Oliver Cromwell London Dry Gin to try. It has won awards and costs less than a tenner – a promising prospect in the Christmas party plonk dash. So I put on my Christmas jumper, cranked the Bing Crosby all the way up to 11 and gave it a try.
Day or night gin? This is 37.5% abv, so it’s a daytime gin. Perfect for serving after an Advent service with a Mr Kipling Christmas Cake Slice, or maybe at the school carol concert.
What does it smell of? Cool and crisp, like a winter’s morning. If you put on a snood that’s lightly misted with hairspray and then went for a walk by the duckpond on a blue sky day, you’d catch the same whiff.
What does it taste of? It’s like someone machine-gunned Narnia with lemons. It opens with a soft, sweet sluice of citrus and ends with a peppery bite of juniper and bark. It’s not a shy gin and it mixes happily with tonic, but it’s too sweet to make a good martini. I wouldn’t use it for cocktails unless I was just looking for alcoholic ballast.
Buy it? At £9.70 for 70cl, this is a bargain. By comparison, at Asda, Gordon’s is £14 for 70cl, Beefeater is £15 for 70cl and Asda London Dry Gin is £11 for 70cl. When it comes to stocking up the drinks cabinet for December’s liver-ruining round of parties, it’s a no-brainer. I’d buy this.
Always a fan of a good day gin…
There’s always a need for a daytime gin on the shelves. Sometimes you need to know you’ve got a gin you can drink freely without feeling financially guilty.
A cheap gin that doesn’t taste like paint stripper? the stuff of legends. On the downside, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Oliver Cromwell gin probably isn’t sold in Aldi over here in Ireland..
Possibly not. Or, at least, not under that name!
It is–but ALDI have changed the name (very wisely) I bought some from Aldi in Eathmines last time I was home—but I’ve forgotten the name they used