Monkey 47 Dry Gin 500ml

Monkey 47 Dry Gin is the Schwarzwald Dry Gin from Germany’s Black Forest, made with exactly 47 botanicals and bottled at 47% ABV. It comes in the brand’s 500ml apothecary-style bottle.

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The distillery sits in Loßburg in the northern Black Forest, and a good third of the ingredients come from the forest itself, including spruce, lingonberries, sloe berries, elderflower and bramble leaves. The full recipe is kept secret. Botanicals are macerated in a molasses-based spirit with soft local spring water, then distilled, with steam passed through a separate basket to draw out the more delicate floral notes. The spirit is then rested in traditional earthenware vessels for around 100 days and only coarsely filtered before bottling.

Lingonberries play an unusual role. The distillery explains that they go into a pre-maceration step mainly to change the texture of the base spirit rather than to add berry flavour. The brand story credits the idea to Montgomery Collins, a British Wing Commander who settled in the Black Forest after the war, a tale the company itself tells as legend, while founder Alexander Stein brought the gin to life in modern times.

Expect a complex, botanical-heavy gin with citrus, floral notes, clear juniper and peppery spice. It suits gin drinkers who want more going on than a standard London dry, and its squat brown bottle makes an easy gift.

Mix it with a light tonic over plenty of ice and a strip of grapefruit or lemon peel, so the tonic does not drown the botanicals. It also makes a rich Dry Martini or Negroni. Because it is 47%, a smaller pour goes further than with a 40% gin.