My "Secret Gin Cupboard"

This is actually a concept, rather than a fixed location.

Originally, it was just that: it was a secret [nice (hopefully) surprise for David at Christmas 2009], contained sloe and damson gin, and it was the left-hand half of the Basque buffet [cupboard by any other name] that's in the entrance hall.

And then it was no longer a secret, morphed into containing Quarante Quatre, Limoncello and other non-gin liqueurs and has since moved.

OK it's moved to another cupboard [until I'm sure that the cellars are bone dry (which the bigger one is most definitely NOT), it will have to stay in a cupboard. Although, I have high hopes of decanting some of my better efforts and laying them down in the space under the stairs...

I have fond memories of making sloe gin when I was a teenager: not so much picking the sloes [they don't call the plants blackthorn for nothing!] or pricking them [a right royal pain: we used to use pins and frequently caught a finger tip!], but the alchemical process of gin [which in those days I hated; my mother didn't believe in painkillers, so gin was the only remedy for period pains!], nasty bitter little fruit & sugar becoming this most smooth of drinks.

And not-at-all gin flavoured, which was a bonus!

Now I have a whole range of drinks in the making; some that suggested themselves [mirabelle, little-red-plums from the meadow, walnut (ripe)], others that I read about ["Taboo", coffee bean, green walnut schnapps].

I've a list where I jot down ideas and I'm trying to keep notes in a book, so that when I find a recipe that's a success I can replicate it and when something needs a bit of work I can try it differently the next time/blend it with another flavour/strength.

So far (keeping my fingers firmly crossed), I haven't had a failure.

Just some that I think need to steep/mature a bit longer [ripe walnuts fall into that category, and the instructions for walnut schnapps is to make it, decant it, then leave it for five years, before diluting it with vodka in a 1:10 ratio].