Portsmouth Distillery Tudor Cherry Gin is in Hampshire at the company’s Fort Cumberland distillery. This is a dark pink, cherry-flavoured gin which is based on the distillery’s popular Tudor Gin.
Portsmouth Distillery was established in 2018 by ex-Navy officers Vince Noyce and Giles Collighan, and Dich Oatley, who had spent many years working in the wine trade. Vince and Giles shared a mutual love of rum, and the distillery was founded with the aim of making barrel-aged Portsmouth Rums, distilled and matured in Portsmouth.
Although the first product to be released, at the peak of the gin boom, was the Fort Gin, this was shortly followed by the distillery’s spiced Cinnabar Rum, 1968 White Rum and the botanical Forum Rum. They have since released the 3-Year-Old 1812 Rum and, in 2024, the first 5-Year-Old 1747 Rum was released. The range is completed by Mutiny Coconut Rum and a Dark Navy Style rum. All are available to buy at Fareham Wine Cellar.
The base for Portsmouth Distillery Tudor Cherry Gin is the distillery’s Tudor Gin. This is handcrafted in small batches (approximately 150 litres) at the Fort Cumberland distillery and is distilled using two stills, a 500-litre pot still made in China, nicknamed Sophie Wu and a 4 plate column still. The botanicals are inspired by botanicals that were found during the excavation of the wreck of Henry VIII’s flagship warship, The Mary Rose. The botanicals are:
To make this cherry-flavoured Gin, the Tudor Gin, which already has decent cherry notes, is macerated with freeze-dried cherries for 24 hours and then filtered. This bumps up the cherry flavours and aromas and also lends the gin its reddish pink colour.
Finally, a little sugar syrup is added. This gin is only lightly sweetened (compared to some flavoured gins) and it is bottled at 37.5cl. As we were told by the distillery, “it is not a sticky-sweet gin like most pink gin offerings, which we always wanted to avoid at all costs.”
On the nose, the Cherry cuts through, on the palate, although sweeter than Tudor Gin it is not too sweet and the wonderful London dry is still present. As the palate clears the mouth is left with a soft sweet cherry finish.
Serve Tudor Cherry Gin can be enjoyed neat, over ice, or as an ingredient in cocktails. It is a popular choice for making gin and tonics (try it with an light Indian tonic water), gin fizzes, and other mixed drinks (try with lemonade). Try it in a Cherry Collins or a Maraschino Gin Fizz.
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