Our Silent Pool Gin review brings you a classic and flavoursome full-bodied gin from a small distillery in the Surrey Hills in England. Bottled at 43%, it’s a gin bursting with 24 botanicals.
The name Silent Pool is taken from a lake on the estate that’s home to the distillery. Apparently it’s an eerily calm lake fed by springs, with stories of bathing maidens from days of yore. The good news is that those maidens have stopped bathing in it now, so it can be more usefully used for gin.
Silent Pool is maiden (sorry) a distillation process that utilises a steam boiler that powers the still. We’ll not list out the full 24 botanicals, but there’s a promise of floral layers (lavender and chamomile), citrus and kaffir lime and local honey to sweeten things up.
The botanical list does include many of our familiar friends alongside the juniper, including angelica root, orris root, cassia bark and cardamom, but there’s a very interesting wider line-up too. For example, rose and elderflower are among the more floral botanicals that get infused via a tea created with the kaffir lime and chamomile.
One of the nicest looking bottles on the market – those colours are teal and copper by the way – this is a gin with a growing following. There are lots of Silent Pool gifts available, like the Silent Pool gift set with Copa glasses or gift boxed Copa glasses on their own.
Silent Pool Gin review
With such a broad range of botanicals, we were intrigued to see what would show through on the nose. Upon opening the bottle, juniper reassuringly hits first. And then, to be entirely honest, we found it quite difficult to pick anything out.
If you’ve ever tried to complete a tasting wheel on a spirit, then you know that you quite often get drawn to an immediate aroma upon nosing your bottle or glass that will either be ‘proven or disproven’ upon tasting. Other than that lovely juniper, we were being sent everywhere on our wheel. Silent Pool is a gin that promises complexity and intrigue.
So, to taste. And that complexity starts to unravel really nicely. In fact, we thought it was one of the most interesting gins we’ve tasted. It (and I hate this phrase so can’t believe I’m using it!) “takes you on a journey”. There’s something of a delicate first taste, followed up by a more robust set of flavours.
The gin journey…
That initial burst seemed, to us, to be the tea infusion mentioned above. It’s light and floral, and seems to be more intense at the back of the mouth. Then the warmth quickly arrives, courtesy of those more traditional botanicals.
However, and this is what we found particularly unusual, there are also hints of sweetness and citrus popping into the frame throughout. It’s a bit like being on a long car journey to the beach with a load of kids who are all singing different songs but who, somehow, have ended up merging into one harmonious symphony. Your natural urge is to tell them to be quiet, but it’s just so melodic that you want them to carry on singing until you reach the coast. I’ve no idea how they’ve done it, and it must have taken a lot of effort to perfect this recipe. Silent Pool really is a triumph of balance, and a huge credit to the distillers involved.
Let’s just stretch that (tortuous) car journey analogy a bit further. It’s the most peppery-voiced kid that’s the last to stop singing at the coast as the others exit the car – that’s the lasting sensation from your journey. And it definitely leaves you looking forward to more signing on the way home.
How to serve Silent Pool Gin
Serving unique gins with such depth can often be a challenge. Not so with Silent Pool; that balance is very forgiving. We enjoyed it neat (it seemed a touch less complex when we did so), but we’d recommend serving Silent Pool with tonic and ice. We particularly liked it with a light tonic we tried (Fever-tree). Basically, we’d suggest going for a tonic that doesn’t introduce any more complexity to upset that balance.
As a garnish, we thought lime (like with these other gins) worked very well (and was our favourite). However, we tried it with various citrus fruits and it proved very versatile. Grapefruit probably just edged into second place for us. We can imagine Silent Pool working well as a base for a cocktail too.
Buy Silent Pool Gin
The great news is that this teal and copper clad beauty is very widely available. In the US/Canada you can buy Silent Pool Gin via this direct link to Drizly here (or click and search on the link below):
In the UK, buy Silent Pool Gin from Amazon or from Master of Malt.
