The pandemic has evidently made 94-year old Queen Elizabeth so bored that she has just launched a specialty dry gin distilled from the botanicals on her 20,000-acre Sandringham country estate.
The gardens on her royal estate in the Norfolk countryside provides all the ingredients for the gin, which costs around $67 per bottle and can take up to two weeks to make; and that regrettably for those outside Britain cannot be shipped overseas.
The gin is made with Sharon fruit, also known as the Chinese persimmon. According to the Sandringham website, the ones used for this gin grow “in the Walled Garden on a sheltered wall at the end of what was a range of glass houses, built on the winnings of the famous racehorse, Persimmon, owned by King Edward VII.”
Every sip therefore is a little taste of history, with the other ingredient, myrtle leaves, coming from plants “also grown on the Estate, [that] originated from a cutting taken from Princess Alexandra’s wedding bouquet on her marriage to Prince Albert Edward, who later became King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.”
A former Buckingham Palace chef reports, according to People Magazine, that the Queen fancies her gin even in her advanced age, treating herself daily to an iced cocktail of gin and Dubonnet with a slice of lemon with lunch.
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The Sandringham Gin is actually only one of several liquor outfits run by the British royals. Buckingham Palace gardens also produces a gin that’s made from “lemon, verbena, hawthorn berries, and mulberry leaves” among eight other hand-picked botanicals from the gardens.
Our new Buckingham Palace gin is available to pre-order online: https://t.co/ccIPwpyZeN
— RoyalCollectionTrust (@RCT) July 17, 2020
Lemon, verbena, hawthorn berries and mulberry leaves are among the 12 botanicals hand-picked for the gin in the Gardens at Buckingham Palace. pic.twitter.com/Kfeo0jyUL1
The Queen’s Balmoral Castle Estate also produces a single-malt whiskey at Royal Lochnagar Distillery, which contains notes of oak and fruit, while Prince Charles’ Highgrove Estate in Cornwall produces a wide range of organic spirits.
If you live in the UK and are fortunate to be able to enjoy the royal booze, Sandringham Estate recommends you enjoy it by “pouring a measure into an ice-filled short tumbler before topping up with tonic and garnishing with a slice of lemon.”
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