Grace Gin from Greece

Grace Gin from Greece is one of the few gins made in that beautiful Mediterranean country, distilled on the island of Evia, and created by three Greek women friends.

I’ll open with a disclaimer. I’m a total Grecophile, first visiting the country as a teenager and going back almost every year since, sometimes several times a year in my other life as a travel writer. I even publish a website about Greece: Greece Travel Secrets. When I first started visiting Greece, there was no such thing as Greek gin, but the Greek gin industry is now growing.

Greek Gin

I believe there are only a handful of Greek gins, and the first one I was able to get my hands on, Stray Dog Wild Gin, was wonderful! It immediately made me think I was back in Greece, walking through pine forests on a hot summer’s day. The Drinkhacker website made it one of their ten best gins for 2020 – and Drinkhacker reviewed a lot of gins that year!

Grace Gin from Greece

Grace Gin has an interesting story behind it, too. It’s made at the Avantes Distillery on the island of Evia, Greece’s second-largest island after Crete. Avantes make their own ouzo, tsipouro, rakomelo, and other Greek spirits as well as this Grace Gin. It’s a distillery I really want to visit, when I get to travel to Greece again.

Grace Gin is the brainchild of three Greek friends, Lila, Hara, and Katerina, and thanks to the existence of The Three Graces in Greek mythology, their gin became known as Grace Gin. The Three Graces appear on the label, which is both retro and cool at the same time.

The Grace Gin Story

So how does a spirit like Grace Gin evolve? It starts in the way Stray Dog Wild Gin did, which is someone having an idea of a gin they wanted to create. It can be from a feeling, a smell, an experience, a taste, or a combination of several things.

In the case of Grace Gin, the three women behind it took over a year experimenting with different combinations of botanicals to hone in on the final 13 botanicals that now go into Grace Gin. It must be an exciting and exhausting process, and so easy to give up and say ‘That’s close enough’, rather than to persevere until you taste the gin and say (in Greek, of course): ‘Eureka! That’s it!’

How They Make Grace Gin

The distillery uses a continuous distillation process to initially infuse their base spirit with eight traditional gin botanicals: juniper berries, angelica root, orris, lemon and orange peels, cardamom, coriander, and cassia bark.

The distiller than takes only the heart of the spirit and puts it through another process using a vapor-infused method that’s also used for making perfumes. During this process five Greek botanicals are introduced: schinos, myrtle leaves and orange blossom from Evia, kritamos from Crete, and pink pepper.

Kritamos is known in English as rock samphire, sea fennel or samphire, so bringing a touch of the sea to the spirit. On Crete people often use it in salads, as it has lots of essentials oils, mineral salts, iodine, and vitamins.

Schinos is an interesting plant. Its scientific name is Pistacia, and it belongs to the same family of plants that produce cashews and pistachios. Another member of the family is the mastic tree that grows on the Greek island of Chios and which lends pine notes to a spirit, while schinos also provides peppery flavors.

It’s obviously a very labor-intensive process, and the result is a gin that is undeniably Greek and is bottled at a potent 45.7% ABV.

Tasting Grace Gin

The bottle is squat and chunky and feels good and safe in the hand. I like the label, which is very distinctive showing a sketch of the Three Graces. An owl is prominent, the owl being a symbol of the Greek Goddess Athena, after whom Athens was named, and GRACE GIN is labelled in gold.

On the nose the juniper is very evident, evoking a pine-tree aroma which I associate so much with hiking in Greece on a sunny day when pine scents are all around you. There’s strong citrus too, from the orange and lemon, as if you’ve stepped into a mixed grove of lemon and orange trees. There’s a hint of the salty kritamos, too. It’s very pleasing, very distinctive, and very Greek.

Tasting the gin, it’s pretty much the same again. Juniper and pine is strong, and the briny kritamos is a little more evident, balanced with a freshness from the myrtle, a little like eucalyptus, and the orange and lemon citrus.

Grace Gin makes an excellent G&T, too. I made one for a friend who likes her G&Ts, but without telling her what the gin was. She took one sip and nodded her approval: ‘This is good, what is it?’

Grace Gin Cocktail Recipes

Grace Gin has provided a few cocktail recipes, as a way of enjoying their gin.

Grace Martini

• 70ml Grace Gin
• 10ml Dry Vermouth
• 1 Dash Orange Bitters

Serve neat.
Flavor with an orange peel.
Garnish with kritamos preserved in brine.

Perfect Grace

• 50ml Grace Gin
• 100ml Mediterranean Tonic
• 1 Dash Orange Bitters

Serve with ice, orange peel, and crushed pepper.

3 Grace Citrus

• 50ml Grace Gin
• 30ml Tangerine Juice
• 10ml Lime Juice
• 1 tbsp Orange Marmalade
• 10ml Simple Syrup

Mix all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and serve with crushed ice.
Garnish with mint and mandarin.

More Information

You can find out more about Grace Gin on the LKC-drinks website, and on the Avantes Distillery website, where it’s made. In the USA it’s imported by Athenee Importers.

Grace Gin retails for about $40-50, which is more than reasonable for a hand-crafted gin of this quality. You can buy Grace Gin from Master of Malt.