Hendrick’s Gin’s Master Distiller on the Latest Cabinet of Curiosities Release
Grand Cabaret, the newest addition to Hendrick's Gin's Cabinet of Curiosities series is sure to be the belle of your next ball.
Hendrick’s Gin, the proudly unorthodox distillery that shook up the liquor industry when it launched its cucumber-and rose-infused gin in 1999, released the latest in its experimental Cabinet of Curiosities line. Following last year’s Flora Adora, Grand Cabaret is the sixth in the massively popular Hendrick’s limited release series. This time around, master distiller Lesley Gracie found inspiration in a stone fruit eau de vie and gin beverage that was favoured in Paris in the early part of the 20th century.
Gracie began to experiment with infusing Hendrick’s gin with the eau de vie fruits directly. “All add a certain thing to the flavour profile and fit really well with the Hendrick’s base because we’ve got plenty of floral elements and herbal elements in the original, and the fruit flavours just fit in really well with all of those,” she says. “It was really interesting to play with something different, because we’ve not approached stone fruit before. From that point of view, it was a really interesting series of experiments.”
And while the term Cabinet of Curiosities (there is an actual one at the Hendrick’s distillery in Girvan, Scotland) might give drinkers the idea that only the most esoteric fruits are used in this gin’s production, Gracie didn’t have to go out of her way to find the fruits for her labour. Though she is loath to reveal exactly which she used, she admits that Grand Cabaret’s unctuous orchard flavours come from “stone fruit that people are totally aware of—it’s not a secret.”
Grand Cabaret dances out of the glass and onto the palate with elegant of peach and pear, as well as a slight hint of the wildflowers that might grow at the foot of the trees in the orchard. And packaged in a royal, purple-labelled version of the same stunning apothecary bottle Hendrick’s has become known for, Grand Cabaret is as much a feast for the eyes as it is the palate. In the end, both in bottle and on, Hendrick’s Grand Cabaret stays true to Gracie’s mantra when creating a new gin: “It’s all a question of trial and error and rebalancing things, just making sure that whatever we add does add to the flavour profile.”
Hendrick’s Gin Grand Cabaret is now available at select retailers across Canada.
