Liquor Cabinet

Issue No. 60 —

Saffron Infused Gin

Qual­i­ty bou­tique gin is sweep­ing the states, so it makes sense that France’s famous micro-dis­tiller (Gabriel Boudi­er of Dijon) has giv­en us an arti­sanal Saf­fron Infused Gin. The gin is based on an old French colo­nial recipe, cen­tered around the spices of India, and hand­craft­ed in small batch­es that uti­lize an old pot still method.

The first thing you notice is the gold­en orange col­or. I’d imag­ine they’d like you to think that comes from the saf­fron infu­sion, how­ev­er after fur­ther inspec­tion you’ll notice that the ingre­di­ents include cer­ti­fied col­or and FD&C Yel­low #5. This is a bum­mer, but I pow­ered through it as I’m on a mis­sion to try all gins known to man. But yeah, neg­a­tive points for that one, Gab. The upfront smell is of juniper, nat­u­ral­ly. The sip test revealed a spicy saf­fron and almost a sweet hon­ey taste. You’ll also notice a hint of fen­nel, corian­der and orange peel. It’s def­i­nite­ly a dri­er gin. Very crisp and clean. Offi­cial­ly the botan­i­cal heavy recipe includes saf­fron, juniper, corian­der, lemon, orange peel, angel­i­ca seeds, iris and fen­nel.

So maybe I was a bit hard on this gin. It’s pleas­ant and I think the col­or could be lever­aged nice­ly in some pre­sen­ta­tions. You can def­i­nite­ly taste the saf­fron, which gives it a very unique taste.

Sells for around $30 a bot­tle.

Note: Gabr­i­al Boudi­er of Dijon also makes a fan­tas­tic creme de cas­sis.

9 Notes on Saffron Infused Gin

  1. Thank you for your kind review of Gabriel Boudi­er Saf­fron Infused Gin.
    To clar­i­fy one com­ment in your review regard­ing the use of a col­or­ing agent.
    We would like to bring some com­ments on this arti­cle, regard­ing col­or­ing agents.

    The col­or is indeed com­ing from the saf­fron Infu­sion. The rea­son why we use col­or­ing agents is to get exact­ly the same col­or from one batch to anoth­er one. The col­or of saf­fron changes a lit­tle bit depend­ing on the crops. In order to get always the same orange col­or we use these col­or­ing agents, but this is not always the case. Some­times we do not have to add some.

    Thank you again
    Vanes­sa

  2. Thank you for clar­i­fy­ing. I appre­ci­ate your com­ments. If you are cater­ing to the small batch cus­tomer, I won­der if this seg­ment would pre­fer an unadul­ter­at­ed liquor with incon­sis­tent col­or­ing over the the usage of dyes and col­or­ing. Was there any sort of mar­ket­ing research done on this? If so, I’d love to hear about the results.

  3. Hel­lo Josh,

    I real­ize this post for Saf­fron infused gin is old­er, but won­der­ing if you have any sug­ges­tions for cre­ations uti­liz­ing this spir­it? We recent­ly had a gin & ton­ic par­ty, our guests each brought a dif­fer­ent vari­ety of gin, and we put them to a blind taste taste. Some friends found this and thought it would be unique. It was unan­i­mous­ly dis­liked, fin­ish­ing at or near the bot­tom of every­one’s cri­tique. So g&t’s may not be it’s strong­point, but I’m sure there are oth­er ways it could be uti­lized. Our friends left the bot­tle behind (they claim acci­den­tal­ly 🙂 Any­how, when we see them again in a month or so I want to turn this into some­thing we can all enjoy! Do you have any sug­ges­tions? Thanks!

    Nate

  4. Nate, I too dis­like this in a gin and ton­ic. Favor­ties at the moment for ref­er­ence would be no 209, Hen­dricks, and Ply­mouth.

    This does how­ev­er work won­der­ful­ly in a Negroni. It also made an inter­est­ing Gim­let.

  5. I bought this gin a while back in hopes of an inter­est­ing adven­ture. I start­ed sim­ply with a gin & ton­ic, opt­ing to stay away from a lime twist and instead using lemon. I did­n’t mind it, but there was some­thing lack­lus­ter about the drink over­all. I just now looked through the cock­tail recipes on the Gabr­i­al Boudi­er of Dijon web­site. I’d love to try this spir­it with either rasp­ber­ry, coconut milk, and/or gin­ger. It would be love­ly if you had any sug­ges­tions.

  6. My favorite Gin after try­ing many is Old Raj; I think because of the saf­fron. I went to buy­ing the G Boudi­er and mixed it with oth­er for gins for a while. I now buy saf­fron and throw a few sprigs in the bot­tles of gin I buy. I think Saf­fron is a great addi­tion, although oth­er­wise I tend to favor just the tra­di­tion­al botan­i­cals.

  7. please send me infor­ma­tion regard­ing who dis­trib­utes your prod­uct in Texas and Louisiana
    thank you

  8. I have sev­er­al bot­tles of the GB Saf­fron Infused Gin. I have mis­placed a recipe that I had for a saf­fron peach mar­ti­ni. made with peach liquor. A mixol­o­gist cre­at­ed it in Cal­i­for­nia. If you have please share it any­one???

  9. Vanes­sa, can you please tell me which spir­it is used in the mak­ing of this product.…grain based or grape based<
    thanks.

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