Smoked Salmon Gin Is a Like a Cocktail and Appetizer in Every Sip
Earlier this month, British seafood producer Young's Seafood announced that it had signed a national supply deal with Asda, Britain's second-largest supermarket chain. Under this new agreement, Young's will become the exclusive supplier of several of Asda's Extra Special-brand smoked salmon varieties, including its Extra Special Gin, Juniper & Lemon Smoked Salmon.
"The Gin, Juniper and Lemon salmon is cured with sea salt and demerara sugar," Young's explains. "The cured sides are then hung and smoked over juniper and oak chips for 15 hours before being infused with multi award winning Scottish Makar Gin, crushed juniper berries and lemon zest."
If gin-infused smoked salmon got your attention, then you might want to take a seat. The owners of a Scottish restaurant have gone full Magnetic Poetry, rearranging a few of those words—and a few of those flavors—to create a smoked salmon-infused gin.
According to Edinburgh Live, Andy Waugh and Calum Mackinnon are selling the wild-sounding spirit through their Mac & Wild restaurant brand. "What on earth we hear you ask? Many of us thought the same initially," the gin's description reads. "Inspired by the famous salmon leap back at our Basecamp up at Mac & Wild Falls of Shin in the Scottish Highlands, this is a Gin with real difference—one for the gin lover who’s tried them all!"
The gin was distilled at the Dunnet Bay Distillery in northeast Scotland, and in addition to the "invigoratingly fresh and savory" flavors of smoked fish, the booze has also been infused with juniper, sea buckthorn, rose root, rowan berries, and blaeberries. (The last one is also known as a bilberry, or European blueberry.)
Currently, Mac & Wild can only ship the £32-per-bottle ($41) gin to addresses in the United Kingdom, but Food & Wine has reached out to Mac & Wild to ask whether the gin will be available at its restaurants in London or in Scotland as well.
Gin seems to be getting the flavor treatment more frequently. In September, Edinburgh-based Pickering's Gin released what it says is "the world's first Brussels sprout gin." That veggie-infused gin was one of six flavors that Pickering's included in its annual set of "Festively Flavoured" Christmas ornaments; the other five baubles in the set were filled with Christmas clementine, cranberry, figgy pudding, plum and ginger, and spiced pear and cinnamon gins.
On top of that, Scottish distillery Poetic License currently offers a Baked Apple and Salted Caramel Gin, Welsh distillery Dà Mhìle has an organic seaweed gin, and Spain's Gin Mare, supposedly tastes like the "essence of the Mediterranean [Sea]." We'll let someone else decide which of those flavors might work for smoked salmon, too.
