Earlier this week in Atlanta we had the pleasure of being invited out to try Oxley Dry Gin, a new spirit that already making history.
Oxley is made via a process called “Cold Distillation” making it the first spirit to ever be created without the use of heat. And let us tell you, you can actually taste the difference. Unlike so many other gins or spirits period, you can actually taste what’s going on with every sip.
While gin is already made with citrus peels, they are usually dried, but with Oxley, they’ve opted to use fresh grapefruit, fresh frozen orange and fresh frozen lemon peels. To round it off, they added English meadowsweet to give it a slight almond flavor to balance the taste. They didn’t come up with this over night though, they actually went through 37 other combinations before settling on this one.
Now that the technical stuff is out of the way, lets talk about how this stuff tastes.
As with most launch parties they already had cocktail suggestions for you. Toasts & Tastes opted to go for the gusto on the first glass and asked for a shot so we could get the raw deal with no masking. We expected it go down pretty smooth, but it surprised us and went down even smoother. We don’t suggest drinking gin straight at any time, ever. But if you were down on your luck, had no juice within arms reach and a bottle of Oxley was the only thing to your name, then yeah, life wouldn’t be as bad as you thought it was.
The first suggested cocktail tried was the Royal Air Force. Here they used equal parts Lavendar syrup, lemon juice, and Luxarado maraschino. It was very LOUD. Maybe because it had one too many things going on. The smell overwhelmed the taste which made it difficult to enjoy. Actually that might have been a good thing because a drink like this makes you want to get rid of it as soon as possible so you can move on to the next drink. So yes, we drank this one pretty fast so that we could move on to the…
Citruszing!
This was easily the best and most popular cocktail of the night. Here they used pink grapefruit juice, agave syrup and yuzu juice. The grapefruit juice enhanced the flavors that Oxley already has while the agave and yuzu gave it a light coating texture. Delicious. So much that everybody started ordering it and the grapefruit juice ran out.
So, as bad as we wanted to have another glass Citruszing, we had no choice but to move on to the Oxley 75. Unlike the previous cocktails, this one came served in a champagne glass and it tasted like a certified party starter. Lemon juice, simple syrup and Lamarca presecco. Yeah, its only three elements but sometimes less is more, especially in this case. While you’re practically drinking gin and champagne, it didn’t taste like anything that would send you over the top. However if you are known to get tipsy off just a little bit of bubbly, you may want to be careful with this one.
The event was hosted at new Atlanta night club Vanquish and of course a lot of cool people came out, including Oxley Gin brand ambassador Jamie Evans, Jarrod Levine and Navarro of The Sound Table.
