Seventy One Gin 700ml

Seventy One takes a distilled gin and rests it for seventy-one nights across three kinds of cask: Spanish virgin oak, American-oak casks that held Pedro Ximénez sherry, and French oak from cognac. That's where the amber colour and the whisky-adjacent depth come from.

The gin is the project of fashion photographer Mert Alas, and it's unusually ornate underneath the wood — the botanical bill runs to rose petals, grapefruit peel and the rare Queen of the Night cactus flower, which blooms for a single night before it wilts.

The nose is warm and sweet: vanilla, toasted oak, a curl of woodsmoke, a little tonka. The palate moves in stages — almond and vanilla from the virgin oak, then sultana and dark chocolate from the sherry cask, then a rounder pear-and-honey note from the cognac wood. Beneath all of it the juniper and citrus still whisper. The finish is long, spiced and gently sweet. At 40% this is very much a sipping spirit: treat it like an aged gin or a soft whisky and take it neat. Tonic would only bury the cask work.

Bring it out after dinner, when you'd otherwise reach for a whisky or a cognac.

How to Serve

Neat in a nosing glass or over a single large cube, at room temperature or barely chilled. If you must mix, keep to a stirred, spirit-forward serve rather than a long drink.

Where to Drink It

Scarfes Bar at the Rosewood — armchairs and a fireside mood. Boisdale of Belgravia — for cigars and after-dinner sipping. Soho Whisky Club — the right crowd for a cask-aged curiosity.

Food Pairings

I'd sip it against dark chocolate or a wedge of blue cheese — both meet that sherry-cask sweetness head on.