From little acorns, big trees grow…

Or in my case, little walnuts and gin bars!

My acorn…

 

Those of you that know me, will gather I am busy in the throws of designing my gin bar. It had got to a point where we had acquired our tenth bottle of gin still with no plan, so I suggested to my husband that we really ought to stop talking about having a gin bar and actually get to the job in hand.

 

As a side, he recently returned from Cape Town with two bottles in hand, both listed in the 5 Must try South African craft gins. Jenever Montane is crafted with a signature floral/rose-geranium flavour giving it a slightly sweeter taste in comparison to the Salt River Gin (definitely my favourite of the two). The Salt River is based on botanicals of juniper, wild rosemary and buchu (which, by the way has medicinal properties of the anti-inflammatory nature…what better excuse post-spin class or game of doubles!).

 

I used ingredients from the list of suggestions for serving and enjoyed the Jenever with a generous slice of grapefruit (all be it pink which I am not sure helped with the sweetness scenario) and fresh coriander. I was then totally blown away by the Salt River which I also tried with grapefruit; only a thin, half slice and thyme. I definitely need to do a re-run with regular grapefruit over pink and see which I prefer but the gins themselves were sensational and the addition of the herbs absolutely made it for me. Totally worth the extra effort!

So back to walnuts and the bar…I am delighted to report that after a couple of weekends of deliberation, much masking tape, head scratching and standing at an imaginary bar with drink in hand…we now have a plan or more importantly a design which has gone off to the professionals to be made into 2D and 3D pictures. The anticipation is immense…waiting to see what has been in my head for months actually laid out in front of me to then consider the right materials. Walnut, clearly, for the counter and the rest you will have to wait to see…!

Cheers! xo