Fruit-Infused Gins from the Cotswolds

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, but when life gave Cara Bexton some plums, she decided to make a fruit-infused gin with them. That’s my kind of thinking!

Fruit-Infused Gins from the Cotswolds

A friend gave Cara a box of ripe plums, and her first thought was to make plum-infused gin and vodka, as Christmas gifts for family and friends. The gins have now made it to market… literally so, as I learned about Cara from my wife who saw her stall at a market in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, where Cara lives, while we were visiting friends nearby.

Fruity Gin Flavours

Cara set up her own company, CC-Gin, to sell her gins and expand her range. There are now six fruity gin flavours: rhubarb, grapefruit, raspberry, blackberry and apple, damson, and of course the original plum. She’s also upped the game with her Christmas gift idea, as she now also makes gin-filled baubles to hang from your Christmas tree.

Choose Your Own Fruit-Infused Gins

Cara will even make you a gin to a specific flavour of your choice, if you like, but you’d better plan ahead as it takes six months for the gins to get to the right flavour strength.

No Experience Necessary

I asked Cara if she’d ever done any experimenting with infused spirits before that friend gave her a box of plums.

Absolutely not! However, being a qualified chef with a creative mind, messing about with different foods is a passion of mine.

Was there a light-bulb moment when you decided you were going to try to do it commercially?

CC-Gin is definitely not something that I had a light-bulb moment about but after some fabulous feedback from friends and family, asking when I was making more, I thought maybe I was onto a winner. That was 2017.

So after you experimented with both gin and vodka, why did you decide to go with the gin and not vodka too?

I prefer gin to vodka. Plus gin is definitely more popular and hugely in fashion at the moment.

And where do you get your fruit from?

All my fruit is locally sourced. I have very green-fingered friends and family, with wonderful plum, apple, and damson trees, and rhubarb plants. I pick blackberries and raspberries myself.  Grapefruit is the only fruit I purchase from my local market.

Tasting these Fruit-Infused Gins from the Cotswolds

The first thing to say is that these are very versatile drinks. You can sip them neat as a pre-dinner drink, enjoy them simply with tonic, try to make more sophisticated cocktails with them, have them as an after-dinner drink, or maybe pour them over ice-cream for a decadent dessert. In fact if you bought a gift set of miniatures in different flavours, you could give one to each guest at a dinner-party and let them choose what to do. Be prepared for a squabble, though, over who’s got the best flavour.

We haven’t yet tried all of Cara’s fruit-infused gins, but the first two have been unbelievably tasty and moreish. We began with the original flavour, plum, which curiously not only tasted and smelled of plums but had a strong almond taste too. If you think gin isn’t the kind of drink you’d like to drink neat, then these fruit-infused gins will persuade you otherwise.

We followed this the next night with blackberry and apple, another intriguing blend of scents and tastes. What’s interesting about the infusions is that the fruit flavours dominate the gin, and the juniper all but disappears. It’s still recognisably gin, but it’s the fruit that’s at the forefront rather than battling with the juniper. It would be interesting to know what gin Cara uses but she says that’s a trade secret!

Buying these Fruit-Infused Cotswolds Gins

Other flavours in the core range are damson, rhubarb, grapefruit, and raspberry, though Cara says that from time to time she does do limited editions of other flavours. Two of these have been blueberry, and mango and passionfruit.

The gins come in 100ml and 500ml bottles, or in a handsome 1-litre decanter. See the CC-Gin website for where you might be able to find Cara and her wonderful fruity gins.