While Britain is the home of gin, an exciting new addition to Waitrose's gin offering is actually from an award-winning Australian distillery. Four Pillars Gin is bringing its Bloody Shiraz Gin to supermarket shelves here in the UK.
Pink gin is a firm favourite but we're spotting more purple gins emerging and this one looks particularly special.
Launching in 200+ Waitrose stores for September 2020, Four Pillars Bloody Shiraz Gin is described by the distillery as an 'experiment-gone-right.'
Cool climate shiraz grapes are soaked in Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin gin for eight weeks, at which point they're pressed to release the naturally purple gin, more Rare Dry Gin is then added to bring the gin up to bottling strength.
With notes of pine forest, white pepper, plum and spices, it's stronger than a traditional slow gin, with less sweetness, making it a great cocktail ingredient.
While we're sure it would taste great with tonic too, the ideal mixer match recommended is Bitter Lemon, known in Australia as a Bloody & Lemon. Or try a Bloody Spritz – a mixture of Bloody Shiraz Gin, grapefruit juice and Prosecco. Both sound delicious.
Stuart Gregor, co-founder of Four Pillars, said: “Taking our Bloody Shiraz Gin to the drinkers of Britain is a lot like selling coals to Newcastle, just a lot more fun. The world of gin and distilleries like ours is indebted to the couple of centuries of great gin-making in the UK; without you, there is no us.
"As Aussies, we obviously have taken something British and tried to improve upon it - we have plenty of great shiraz grapes and we make some of the best gin in the world, so it seemed a pretty bloody good idea to combine the two and see if the end result could be greater than the sum of the parts!"
Four Pillars Bloody Shiraz Gin (RRP £35.00) is available in 200+ Waitrose stores across the UK.
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Elena Chabo is Cosmopolitan UK's former beauty writer, working on everything from buzzy celeb news and trending beauty, to sincere first-person reviews and engaging video content for social media. She also creates meatier features and expert-led how-to guides, for print and online. Her passion for Black beauty, textured hair, and the ways beauty interacts with culture, society, identity and relationships, quickly took over her writing career and led her into beauty journalism. Following an MA in Magazine Journalism in 2017, she cut her teeth across various roles at Stylist Magazine, before taking on a Digital Writer role at Good Housekeeping. It was here that beauty took centre stage and she launched and ran the site's first stand-alone beauty section. Remaining at Hearst, she joined the Cosmo beauty team in 2022. Find her on LinkedIn.
