Cucumber Spirit is truly superb. Fresh, fragrant cucumber aroma on the nose, almost with a hint of white pepper.

 Glorious, crisp cucumber on the palate: but the real surprise comes at the finish. A rich, deep and mouth-watering honeydew melon! Quite an incredible surprise: unless you are a botanist or plant enthusiast, as you would already know that these are phylogenetically closely related, being members of the same family.

 Every sip contains unmistakable cucumber flavours, and yet different to the experience of taking a bite of a fresh cucumber. That’s because we’ve captured the bits of the cucumber that only bind to alcohol, and less so the bits that bind to water. Hence, a spirit with the concentrated goodness of eighty eight fresh cucumbers: something quite unique and utterly delicious.

​In Dr John's words:

​“The humble cucumber dressed up and ready to party hard. That said, cucumber is a toosh Marmite, so if you are dead against them to start with, or consider it the ruination of a good sandwich, best give it a wide berth.”

We start with our own single distilled, East Anglian sugar beet vodka: for a base spirit that’s super smooth but capable of carrying the flavours we need.

 If we infused it with cucumbers, we’d have cucumber vodka: as well as something that tasted quite soggy and wet. The key distinction is distilling with cucumbers to extract the alcohol soluble flavours we want in our spirit.

 We slice and de-seed our fresh cucumbers and into the still they go, along with the vodka. The process of distilling means we grab all the right flavours from the cucumber: which means what comes off the still is the concentrated essence of crisp, fresh cucumber. The soggy bits stay in the still and are eventually sent off to be recycled, along with the impure parts of the spirit that we don’t want.

Single distilled sugar beet vodka; eighty eight fresh cucumbers

This is an instant classic at any garden party: with a variety of uses in any budding bartender’s arsenal. Some of Dr John’s favourites:​

 “Simply with ice and tonic water one to one. Slice of cucumber for eye-candy.

 Swap vodka for Cucumber Spirit in a Bloody Mary and throw away the celery stick. Heaven with convenient parking.

 One to one with PIMMs prior to adding your lemonade and garnish. Magic with a big wand.

 As for cooking, I make a salt sugar brine with it in for my salmon prior to smoking.”  It also pairs very well with sushi.

 This is a great spirit to experiment with: with such a distinctive and original flavour, it can be used as an alternative to vodka or gin in an enormous variety of cocktails.