Our Holiday Spirit Animal Is This Colorado-Made, Juniper Juice

We remember our first sip of gin.

It was a balmy afternoon in Lubbock, Texas, and we will never forget our buddy handing us our very first, and still favorite libation, a simple but wildly delicious gin & tonic. The refreshing, botanical flavors still take us back to that summer day but, we have equal parts fond memories of this spirit during the fall and winter months as well. We handed off the torch a few times over introducing juniper berry liquid to a slew of friends along the way and recall someone asking us once, “what does it taste like?” To which he met a quicker reply from a fellow gin appreciater, “it tastes like a Christmas tree in a glass.”

Don’t put this drink in a sunshine soaked box and instead open up this gift giving bottle as the perfect base to make your holiday cocktails sing merry and bright.

Spirit Hound Distillers levels up the clear spirit game with a barrel-finished gin that’s the perfect pairing for the chilly weather headed our way. This Colorado-made gin begins with freshly-picked juniper berries from the banks of the St. Vrain River in Lyons, CO. The gin is then aged in new, charred White American Oak barrels for six months, creating a delightful meshing between spices and oak. Spirit Hound’s resident mixologist, Amanda Englehorn, shares her London Fog cocktail recipe which features the woody take in a dairy-free yet, still decadent, night cap.  

London Fog

Serve in an Old Fashioned Glass

•  1-1/2 oz Spirit Hound Distillers’ barrel-finished gin 
• 1/2 oz tart cherry simple syrup
• 3/4 oz Earl Grey simple Sryup
• 2 oz Oat Milk

Garnish: Lemon Twist

Directions:

Add gin, tart cherry syrup, and Early Grey to a shaker; add ice and shake. Pour contents of shaker in an Old Fashioned glass, leaving room for the Oat Milk (leave some ice behind in the shaker, if necessary, by straining out the last of the liquid into the glass). Top with Oat Milk, and top with expressed lemon twist, rubbing around the rim of the glass.

Tart cherry simple syrup:

Make infusion – Roughly chop 4.25 oz dried tart unsweetened cherries and place in infusion jar with one bottle vodka. Infuse for one week. Strain out cherries. Make syrup – Using a simple syrup (dissolved 1 cup sugar in 1 cup hot water, cooled), mix 1 cup syrup & 1 cup cherry infusion.

Earl Grey simple syrup:

Pour 2 cups boiling water over 4 Earl Grey tea bags and allow to steep for 5 minutes. Remove tea bags and stir in 2 cups of sugar until dissolved. Chill.

“I think it’s a mistake to pass over gin as the main spirit in a holiday drink,” says Englehorn. “In the case of Spirit Hound’s barrel-finished gin, you get the added bonus of oak reinforcing the herbal and spicy characters of our classic gin with rich vanilla and nutmeg characters.”

*All images courtesy of Spirit Hound Distillers