When I was recovering from my left knee replacement in September, my lovely friend Katy sent me a consolatory gin tasking selection. It contained miniatures of eight different artisan gins, none of which I’d heard of. Unfortunately I couldn’t sample them at the time as alcohol was contraindicated by the painkillers I was taking.

Now off the painkillers, I’ve sampled them all over the last couple of weeks, along with several other gins which I happened to have available. All together I tried 14 different gins.
First of all I tried each gin neat, pouring just a teaspoon or two into a shot glass and having a sip. This I spread over a couple of evenings. Then, over several further evenings, I sampled each miniature (or equivalent quantity) with ice and lemon in a 250ml glass topped up with my usual low calorie tonic – ie. as a fairly ordinary gin & tonic. (I’m sure neither method is what you’re supposed to do, but the latter seemed like a fair test of the gins as I would normally encounter them.)
Notes – both mental and scribed – were made. During the process I found that tasting the gin & tonic was much better than the neat gin; I found the neat gin too fiery to enable my unrefined palate to discern any subtlety.
Here, for what they’re worth, are my opinions of the 14 gin & tonics:

Gin	Notes	Stars
Tarquin Sea Dog	Bland; slightly fragrant, almost barber’s shop aftershave	★★
Williams Grapefruit	Great bouquet of grapefruit when poured.  Less in the mouth but lots of grapefruit follow-on.	★★★★
GB Old English	Slightly sweet and very fruity, with lots of citrus/grapefruit	★★★★
Williams Elegant	Very aniseed flavour.	★
Blooms	Bland, only just faintly herbal	★★★
Darnley’s Spiced	Quite flavourful and very slightly spicy rather than floral	★★
Nightingale’s Rhubarb	Slight oxalic acid nose; rather pleasant and slightly fruity	★★★
Dr J’s	Medicinal	★
Haymans’ Gin Liqueur	Slightly sweet and slight juniper; quite pleasant	★★★★
Gordon’s	Slight juniper but basically bland	★★★
Hammer Old English	More fragrant and juniper; very slight sweetness; smooth and pleasant	★★★★★
Warner’s Rhubarb	Fruity; slight sweetness; very pleasant	★★★★★
Hendrick’s	Cucumber; nasty	★
Adnams Copper House	Nicely balanced juniper; slightly fruity; smooth and very pleasant	★★★★★

In summary: It was a very interesting experiment. And it is a shame I wasn’t very taken by any of the eight gins in the tasting selection (the first eight on the list), although Wiliiams Grapefruit and GB Old English were indeed interestingly pleasant. Hayman’s Gin Liqeur doesn’t work for me as a liqueur, but it is pleasant if you like your gin on the sweet side. But, slightly to my surprise, it confirmed my preference for the three gins I drink most often: Adnams Copper House, Hammer Old English and the lately discovered Warner’s Rhubarb. I had actually expected these to be knocked off top spot by one of the eight.
So, big thanks to Katy for a very nice and thoughtful present, and for what turned out to be an interesting experiment.