Barrel-Aged Gin
A barrel-aged gin and RTD Negroni in a bottle from new English distillery Bone Idyll are two of the best spirits tasted by Travel Distilled recently.
Distillers are doing some amazing things with barrel-aging experiments at the moment, along with brewers and winemakers. So much so that I’ve written an entire book about barrels and barrel-aging, Cask Strength, due to be published in July 2023.
One of the people I spoke to for the book is Sam Berry, who is the distiller at Bone Idyll, a new English distillery he co-founded with his wife, Alex. Sam is a bartender by trade but the couple opened their first restaurant six years ago and have since opened several more.
It was in their first restaurant, No. 97 in Surbiton, that Sam installed a small still in their basement bar and taught himself how to make spirits. ‘What started as a little hobby and side hustle,’ he told me, ‘has now transformed into a full-time hustle!’
Barrel-Aged Gin
Bone Idyll now makes a vodka, a rum, a botanical rum, a pink gin, and a London dry gin. What interested me most, however, because of my book, was their Barrel-Aged Gin and their ready-to-drink Negroni cocktail made from the gin and sold in a bottle. I asked Sam Berry about the gin, which is aged for three months in a whisky barrel.
Why did you decide to include a barrel-aged gin in your first spirits?
‘I’m a bartender by trade and I wanted to curate a range of spirits that we could use in our cocktails. Creating a wide range was important to allow us to use a range of different spirits. I’ve always loved the aging process and a barrel-aged gin adds so many different dimensions and depth.’
Why did you decide on using a whisky barrel?
‘We wanted to create something a bit different. We wanted the gin to pick up the subtle whisky flavours from the barrel whilst not being too overpowering. This is why we landed at a three month ageing process. It’s still very much a gin but with a long finish you get those woody, vanilla notes coming through. Truly unique.’
And what kind of barrel and where did you source it?
‘It’s from a Scottish distillery and in our first barrel, there was a little liquid left over and it was bloody tasty!’
Tasting the Barrel-Aged Gin
I’d like to have tasted that whisky as the gin is also, to quote Sam Berry, ‘bloody tasty’! We tried it first in a Gin and Tonic, with Fever Tree’s plain tonic water. Just as the gin is recognisably a gin, but with the subtle whisky flavour too, so the drink was recognisably a G&T but with the added flavor tasted more like a complex cocktail. The juniper is there, but not too strong, and joined by delicious hints of wood and smoke.
All I can say is that as we sat in the garden on a hot evening after a hard day’s work, we both gave sighs of approval as the drink slipped down. Sipping the gin on its own a few days later, it proved to be equally delightful and one of those rare gins that you can actually drink neat or with an ice-cube dropped in.
Making the Barrel-Aged Gin
The Barrel-Aged Gin isn’t, as you might assume, made with their London Bone Dry Gin. Sam Berry tried that first, but wasn’t happy with the result. ‘Although tasty,’ he said, ‘we found the high levels of juniper with the woodiness was too overpowering. In our minds the idea was to create a liquid that could create a perfect gin Old-Fashioned. Eventually we lowered the juniper right down to let the ageing process come through, and swapped the grapefruit peel for fresh orange peel.’
You aged it for three months. Was it a case of constant tasting till you’d got what you were looking for?
‘We experimented for two and then six months. Two months didn’t get enough and six months although good, felt too long. We also wanted to create a gin that has great consistency but is readily available. This is especially important as a cocktail ingredient and we ended up flying through the stuff. We also use the barrel-aged gin in our barrel-aged Negroni RTD (ready to drink) which adds that 4th dimension to it.’
Any more barrel-aging in the pipeline?
‘At the moment no – we are just concentrating on this recipe but eventually we would like to release different special releases, hopefully in 2023.’
Does being a mixologist have advantages when also being a distiller?
‘I think it 100% helps. You have an idea and feel for what flavours you’re trying to achieve but again it’s always down to the learning. When we first started at the bar, we had our chefs who have a sound understanding of flavour with spices for example, so we would always pick their brain on flavour profiles too.’
Barrel-Aged Gin Negroni
As you’d expect, their Barrel-Aged Negroni is also outstanding, adding yet another layer of flavours – vanilla and spiciness – to the gin and smoky whisky base. And just like the G&T, it’s definitely a Negroni, but one with a wonderful and surprising twist.
Bone Idyll
But where did the clever name of Bone Idyll come from?
‘Our concept of the restaurants,’ Sam told me, ‘was always city meets country. The décor was something that you would find in London but the menu was fresh, seasonal and service always friendly, which is what you would often find in the countryside. We wanted to keep this concept and so settled on Bone being the nitty gritty of the city and Idyll being Idyllic for the countryside.’
Sam certainly isn’t ‘bone idle’ himself. When I questioned him he was busy getting ready to launch a Gin School at the distillery (now open), and also planning to buy a boat and start gin cruises in the summer.
Buying Barrel-Aged Gin
You can buy the Barrel-Aged Gin and the Barrel-Aged Negroni on the Bone Idyll website.
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