Young Henrys Noble Cut

About the Drink

An uncommon gin distilled by Young Henry’s in Newtown, inspired by their lineage as a brewery. The bottle describes itself as A New World Australian gin, introducing techniques and flavours from both brewing and distillation. With a youthful contempt for gin’s British heritage, Young Henry’s has produced a unique expression of quintessential Australian botanicals including pepperberries, lemon myrtle and Tasie-grown hops. No longer produced, this was a bottle I received for my birthday a couple of years back as the line went end-of-sale.

Notes

The pepperberry and lemon myrtle notes definitely come through, with a faint bitterness of the hops if you really pay attention . I like Australian gins, particularly lemon myrtle as a botanical in the distillation process. The gin is lovely neat or with ice, but feels slightly too delicate to have much more than a touch of soda water without diluting the flavours too much. It might be because the gin is slightly old, but on the nose the gin isn’t particularly pleasant and there aren’t any notes I can pick up, only the scent of the alcohol. Something to serve with a twist of lemon or maybe a something like cardamom to bring out the hop flavour more?

Worth It?

If you can find it, it’s worth getting just for the history and the experience of trying a hop-infused gin. Not a particularly notable gin though and not something that you would want to have regularly as the flavours are just a bit too subtle and I imagine would disappear quickly. It’s nice, but it’s understandable why the line was discontinued - it’s not quite typical enough to be an everydy gin, but not enough to be a premium gin. I heard this described once as “an ideal third- or fourth- line gin” to provide variety to an offering without being the main centepoint, which feels like an accurate description.