Wayward Distillation House Unruly Gin

It’s hard to argue with the fact that bees are awesome. They pollinate plants to help make new plants, and they make both beeswax and honey. Honey, as it turns out, makes really good gin. Of course, regardless of the type of base spirit used, the distiller orchestrates the flavor profile. Wayward Distillation House, based in the Comox valley on Vancouver Island, does a great job of this with their spectacularly unique Unruly gin. Unruly gin uses honey spirit as a base and adds classic botanicals along with one or two twists to produce a smooth, pleasantly sweet and distinctive gin.

This gin is another one that is easy to drink neat; it has a unique quality due to honey base spirit that adds a sweet roundness to the gin – like drinking mead I suppose, which until running into this gin, I’d only read about in books. Despite the honey backbone, juniper remains fairly prominent, with a balanced light citrus and some distant, barely perceptible floral and spice notes that linger and then disappear through the soft finish.

Due to the inherent sweetness of this gin, for G&Ts it’s better mixed with a dry tonic without a lot of overpowering botanicals. That said, once you get a good tonic it’s easy to add different garnishes to get really good results. I really like this gin with fever tree light and fennel, or on the other hand use a light dry botanical tonic and combine fennel with lemon. Overall Unruly gin is distinctive in a very good way, and offers loads of opportunities for those inclined to experiment with it in drinks.

Notes

Smell – sweet with subtle juniper and floral elements

Taste Neat – soft and floral at first, evergreen freshens the profile in sharp contrast to the underlying gentle floral and spice notes; very light if any citrus

In a G&T – try lemon and/or fennel; excellent with a dry herbal or botanical tonic like FT mediterranian or fermentorium artisanal dry. Also nice with a light dry tonic, for a more mellow, less punchy G&T