Gin Friendly

When Lady Wildwood, late of London Gothic, decided to throw a party to celebrate her birthday at the weekend she settled on calling it Gin Frenzy, and asked friends to bring along examples of gins to taste. I was all set to purchase a bottle from our local Surrey distiller, Silent Pool, until to my utter dismay she posted a picture of her drinks cabinet and there was a bottle of Silent Pool already. Disaster - but I was able to discover and source a bottle of Dorset distiller Lilliput's output instead. I found that there are two Dorset gin-makers; the other is Conker, but Lilliput has the nicer bottles.

I like the odd gin. I don't think I ever partook of it at the Vicarage in Sands years ago, where Fr Bombaysapphire plied all his guests with a variety of drinks and where the gin flowed freely; instead it was in Lamford that a friend who served the most lethal gins as an aperitif got myself and Dr Bones into such disastrous habits. Now it sometimes fortifies me against an evening of meetings when that has to happen. It's astonishing to see how gin has become so hugely fashionable in the last decade, to the point that supermarkets now have a whole display of the stuff where they would once have had only a shelf. Every part of the land has its artisan distillers, so I was fairly confident I would find one based in Dorset.

Lady Wildwood's party was lovely, a chance to meet up with friends old and new. We ended up discussing 18th-century garden hermits, royal titles, and the links between architecture and spirituality. Driving, I never had the chance to taste more than one gin and it seemed impolite to broach the bottle I'd bought, so I may have to buy some for myself, just for patriotic reasons.