Weekend review. 31/01/2019 through to 02/02/2019
Just the three events this weekend!! Just the 3! In January. That's totally unheard of for me! That's how amazing this year has already been for me. literally Double the amount of events compared to 2018!
THURSDAY
It all started on Thursday night, for another gin tasting night. I was booked by the Appletree in Gosfield, just north of Braintree to lay on one of my awesome gin tasting nights.
When Johanna originally booked me for this, back in November last year, she'd literally sold 30 tickets within two days, so there was a brilliant take up on this. When I turned up on the night, there were actually 38 people booked in, which is a little bit larger than what I normally like to do for gin tastings. However, only 30 turned up due to illness, so it was a really, really, good night.
As this was an Essex crowd, the tastes and the flavour profiles were completely different to my gin tasting last week over in Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. Again, there was no out and out clear favourite with this, even with the Tonic waters, as well. Everyone like completely different tonic waters. However, the big surprise for me was that, actually, Britvic tonic water probably came out joint top. It wasn't everyone's favourite, but everyone thought it was in their top two or three tonic waters. That really surprised me.
For the gin night, though, what really surprises me every single night, is that Pinkster Gin, which is the pink gin that I normally use for my blind gin tastings. Pinkster Gin always gets a very bad reception because not many people like when it when they compare it to something like Gordon's Pink Gin or Beefeater Pink Gin. But, as the night grew on, we had some clear favourites there. We had people loving Gin Mare, and people loving Bulldog Gin. They were the big two favourites.
It was a really, really, lovely, friendly crowd. Out of the 30 people booked in, only two of them were blokes. The other 28 of them were rowdy females.
We started the evening with a round of Bellini's. This week, I was testing out some of Tesco's brand new fruit liqueurs, so we had a collection of blood orange Bellini. I had a raspberry and hibiscus Bellini, and I had a rhubarb and ginger Bellini. These liqueurs cost £12.50 from Tesco's, and, actually, they are really quite nice. They do the job quite well. That was Thursday night.
FRIDAY
On Friday, was a small Birthday Party. This time round, Sarah had booked me to come over to Diss. They had hired the house for the weekend. They arrived Friday night, so I was there to start the weekend off for them. Sarah had booked me just for a standard cocktail masterclass, which starts off, as always, with my Tiki Fire shots of rum, my 70% rum. Then, we very quickly went on to mojitos, pornstar martinis and brambles.
This was a really fun group. Average age in their mid 40s. And there was 15 of them in total. As they were all arriving from London, and two of them coming down from Manchester, this was a late start for me. I didn't start until 9pm. But, that was absolutely fine. We got the weekend off to a flyer!! They had a really, good fun time. They were still drinking well after I left. So, that was Friday night.
SATURDAY
Then, onto Saturday night. This was hen party number 231 that I've done since I started my business. BUT, my first ever Hen Party gin Tasting Night.
Jan, who was the mother of the bride, had booked me to do a gin tasting night for her daughter and 15 of her friends. This event was over in Therfield, near Royston, just south west of Cambridge.
The girls had their day very well planned out. They were clay pigeon shooting before I arrived. I was there to do a gin tasting before they went into dinner that evening. They also had an afternoon tea, just before I started as well. This was as small group. A few gin enthusiasts that knew the history and knew things about the brands. Again, there was no out and out clear favourite of gins. The girls seemed to like Bulldog. They seemed to like Bombay Sapphire quite a lot. And they seemed to like Gin Mare. That was a big favourite for them.
As far as the tonic waters went, again, this was the second gin night recently where they managed to find the Fever Tree. Three of them actually found Fever Tree. But, again, the out and out favourite tonic water for this one was Britvic tonic water. Although, once I showed them the flavours, they really did start to enjoy some of the Double Dutch tonic waters. The Franklins and Sons Rosemary and Black Olive went down quite well. This event was an early start for me. I started at 3pm, which meant I was over and done with by 6pm and back at home by 7pm and all cleared up.
Really fun weekend. No event this Sunday for me. I've now got a few days off before my next all-inclusive party, which is on Thursday, down in Gerrard's Cross again for Claire at Splendiferous Foods.