Garden of Elysian – Florian Gin

For my second Home Bar Awards drink this month, I again used apples and gin. However, in contrast to my first cocktail using local ingredients, the drink turned out quite fruity. On the one hand this was due to the different apple flavours I added to the mix, but on the other hand I also added an excellent local cherry eau de vie.

I already featured the Florian Gin from Franziska Bischof here on the blog. The floral London Dry Gin uses 16 botanicals among them chamomile, elderflower, hibiscus, lilac, lavender and roses. Most of the botanicals are grown in the distillery’s own garden. In the end, the gin is bottled at 45 % ABV.

Floral, but classic

The Florian Gin manages to be at the same time very floral and juniper-forward. You can taste a lot of lilac, roses and chamomile notes. Apart from that, there are spicy and herbal notes with a distinct juniper flavour in the taste. In my opinion the gin works best in all sorts of cocktails calling for floral gins, like the Vieux Mot.

All about apples

So, I loosely based this drink for the “local” challenge of the Home Bar Awards on a cocktail I created for another cocktail challenge in March. Basically, I switched the rum for gin and the vanilla syrup for apple syrup. On top of that, I replaced the hazelnut eau de vie with cherry eau de vie and the sparkling Cidre with still apple wine. Since limes are also not a regional product, I again used sour apple juice (30 g malic acid per litre juice).

The “Garden of Elysian” starts off with a nice combination of gin and apple notes. After a short while the apple notes take over the sip completely with sweet and sour apple flavours. The cherry eau de vie is just there to sport the other ingredients and to add a bit more fruitiness. In the end, more herbal notes take over and lead to a lingering long apple flavoured finish.