Advent Spirits Day 11: Askur Dry Gin

So, just to give you a peek behind the curtain: As soon as I open the Advent Drawer O’ Spirits and see the drink of the day, I go to the company website to get a feel for what they are trying to do. Today’s spirit is something called Askur Dry Gin.

So I dutifully plugged that name into Google and was immediately met with these images:

This in itself should speak volumes about how desperate spirits companies are to try to snag younger customers. But what struck me even more than the painfully desperate attempt to appear hip and relevant and ironic was the uncanny sense of déjà vu I felt when I saw the website. Especially when I read their description of their gin: “The base spirit is made from the highest quality wheat from the champagne region of France,” then “Blended with pure Icelandic water which is very low in minerals and high in PH allows the character of our distillates to flourish.” Remember this from Day 2 of this series? The “Helix7 Vodka“? It too used French wheat and Icelandic water.

Turns out both Helix7 and Askur Gin are made by a company called Wanderlust Spirits, based in Florida. And they evidently used the same models for the respective websites of the two spirits.

Anyway, Wanderlust is not unique it trying to portray its spirits as small, quirky, stand-alone companies. It’s not an unforgivable sin. So let’s just proceed with our tasting.

Color: The color is identical to that of Costco’s bottled drinking water. In other words, there is no color. And that’s as it should be.

Aroma: There is a strong scent of juniper–overwhelmingly so. It reminds me of when I hid in the juniper bushes while playing hide and seek as a child, and I kept picking off juniper berries and tossing them at my brother (who was “It”) whenever he had his back to me. For the rest of the day my hands smelled of juniper berries/gin. Returning to the present day, I do note that this gin also has a bit of a citrus aroma on the nose, which adds a note of freshness to the piney smell of the juniper berries.

Taste: This is honestly like no other gin I’ve tasted. Sure, it’s got the expected botanicals, though this has a bit of a medicinal taste mid-palate. I also am reminded of those mysterious, unpopular nuts that are always the last to be eaten from the bowl of mixed nuts my mom would put out on Christmas. (Brazil nuts? Filberts? I never knew which was which.) But there’s something else going on with this gin–something unexpected and interesting.

In the interests of science, I did a side-by-side comparison with Bombay London Dry Gin. The difference is astounding. The Askur is brighter, bolder, more complex, and more citrus-y. The Bombay, by comparison, is muted and boring. I don’t know if that French wheat and Icelandic water really make a difference, or if there’s something else going on. But this is a far superior gin, in my opinion.

Finish: There’s a pronounced warmth on the finish, and a lingering hint of limoncello. Somehow it also feels like you just brushed your teeth.

Bottom Line: To be honest, I wasn’t prepared to like this, given the website that seems to be trying way too hard to show how hip and different and trendy they are. But this is truly delicious. What’s more, it looks like you can buy a bottle for about $22. So I’m definitely going to try this in my next martini and/or Gin and Tonic.