Hendrick's Flora Adora

My wife has been searching for her own bottle of this after trying it at a nearby lounge, and we finally picked it up a few nights ago. I have never personally been a fan of Hendrick's, as I've thought even the base spirit had certain botanicals that were aggressive and too overpowering, with the variants being even further away from a more traditional gin flavor. However, Hendrick's markets themselves as a modern gin and is fully aware of their uniqueness of ingredients, so there's no docking them for that. This variant seems very curious, since nowhere on the bottle or website is there any list of the specific additional botanicals that were used, instead using creative buzzwords and leaving the flavor profile up to imagination. Based on this, I'm expecting obvious and heavy use of flowers or other garden botanicals that are not present in other competitive modern gins. The nose indeed reflects floral notes alongside a soft base of coriander and juniper. I get very green, leafy notes of non-specific fresh plants, with a focus on roses and lavender. There's a small ethanol kick present, but not enough to force you to draw back from the glass. Repeated smelling brings small notes of lemon and lime zest, and an even smaller hint of raw cacao. The body is quite light, but also fairly watery, with immediate flavors of the same roses and lavender found on the nose, alongside some baking spice and fairly soft, approachable juniper. The finish has a dry, perfume-y taste, while the body remains light and falls off pretty quickly. There's a small tingle in the front of the gums, but not enough to be considered spicy or boozy. That same raw cacao comes around through the finish, but repeated sips continue to bring up more and more plain floral notes without any specificity. There indeed is a noticeable uniqueness of flavor to this Hendrick's variant, but ultimately falls flat with the delivery. It's especially difficult to deliver an aggressively floral flavor without any speicifc promises to go off of, so this leads the customer to draw their own conclusions, and, in my case, this doesn't quite hit the mark. If you must have a gin with these specific floral notes in it for some cocktail, the price point is still very fair here. And speaking of cocktails, I find it a very nice touch to include a cocktail recipe right on the bottle that benefits from using this speicifc variant; this is likely a turning point detail contributing to a good chunk of sales to those who love spirit-specific cocktails. As for myself, I am hesitant for cocktail use, especially with a lot of ice, because the body is already so light and very well may easily be drowned out by other additives or ingredients.

Way to floral for me... 💐

Just overpowering and chemical tasting. Made it seem as though I’d sprayed Glade air freshner into my G&T and my martini. Wife agrees. Love Hendricks plain but this variation is undrinkable to me at any strength. Experimented with cutting with regular Hendricks but after 1:4 failed i gave up.

Tastes like grapefruit and roses to me