Plymouth Navy Strength Gin

This makes a great Negroni. I love the standard strength in a Martini with a lemon twist. Not my favorite neat. But one of my favorite Negronis.

As good as it gets in the gin world

I love having discovered the concept of navy strength gin, and was very happy to find this at my local store, even if it was the only navy strength gin there. The Distiller board seems to love it, and although I think the amount of botanicals used is shockingly small, maybe simplicity is the key to the enjoyment here. In any case, I'm excited, and hope to enjoy and purchase more navy strength variants as I hiatus from other spirits. I DID know that this was going to be a clear spirit, of course, but the green tinted glass bottle is subtle, and was able to convince my brain that this gin was full of flavor. The nose is a split balance between citrus and floral, specifically some lime leaves, flower petals, lemon and lime rind, and some orange blossom. It may seem like I repeated myself, but it really is a simple back and forth between nostrils, with the juniper lightly holding back, and the ethanol surprisingly not making a big appearance almost at all. The citrus rind is the first flavor I taste, showcasing the oils at first, and then fading into just the rind itself some seconds later. The floral character is also on the taste, but I can't pull out anything specific, because it seems to just sit inside the top of my nose as a smell and not quite transform into a flavor to be tasted. I really only get a mild or mild-medium amount of juniper, and when I taste it more near the finish, I may also be getting a tea leaf flavor, but if so, it's very faint. The burn is quite good through the finish, as to be expected. The flavors are left behind in the gums, but not in an oily manner like some whiskeys, and instead just digging into the gums and coming out slowly, like some jerky chew. The flavor of this one was indeed pretty simple, but that definitely did not lead me to like it any less. Most gins that I seek have many botanicals, or a real heavy focus on a certain flavor profile, like the juniper, citrus, floral, juicy, etc, but having a "boring" gin like this is always a mood that comes along no matter how much flavor you try to hunt out. Because the juniper flavor is not as potent as I would have liked with this, it's both hard to envision a good gin while drinking this, but also easy to allow the other botanicals to take over more within the higher proof. It was certainly enough to show me that navy strength gins are definitely worth pursuing, and I look forward to not only purchasing more variants, but also to try this in classic cocktails, since the reviewing is always done neat. I never quite saw eye to eye with sailors, but this is one tradition I will have to admire about them.

Bloody brilliantly gin!