Three Bottles Worth Talking About This Summer
Every so often the drinks cabinet throws up a lineup that has no business working together; a Norwich fruit gin, a cask-strength Scottish rum, and a Greek vodka infused with olives, and yet here we are, three very different bottles, three very good reasons to pour something tonight.
Bullards Summer Pudding Gin
Norwich’s Bullards has been distilling since 1837, and this is the gin that gets pulled out the moment anyone mentions “dessert in a glass.” The botanicals lean hard into British summer pudding territory, juniper alongside raspberries, blackberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants, with vanilla pods, tonka bean and cracked caramel rounding it out. The genuinely odd touch is sliced white bread going into the still, which is exactly why it picks up that soft, cake-like richness rather than tasting like a straight berry liqueur.
At 40% ABV it’s a proper gin underneath the fruit, not a sweetened afterthought, so it holds its own against tonic without collapsing into candy. It’s best treated as a dessert pour — over ice on its own, or as the base for a fruit-forward cocktail — rather than your everyday G&T gin, and it’s sweeter than a classic London Dry drinker might expect. But taken for what it is, a nostalgic, generous, very English take on gin, it delivers exactly what the label promises.
Buy it: Bullards Spirits – Summer Pudding Gin, £45 for 70cl.
Ninefold Scottish Aged Rum — The Whisky Exchange Cask Exclusive
This one has a genuinely interesting backstory. Ninefold is a small distillery in Dumfries & Galloway making rum from scratch in Scotland, not importing spirit to age, but fermenting and distilling molasses on-site. This particular bottling was a single ex-bourbon cask (a Woodford Reserve barrel, matured May 2020 to May 2023) bottled exclusively for The Whisky Exchange, yielding just 207 bottles. It was reportedly the first UK rum ever given an exclusive release by TWE, which tells you something about how highly it’s regarded in that world.
Bottled at cask strength, 62.2% ABV, it’s not a shy pour. Expect a wave of salted caramel, toffee and buttery banana up front, with red apple, brown sugar and roasted pineapple underneath, and a warm finish of toffee apple, pear and a whisper of green chilli heat. It’s rich and characterful without tipping into “sweet mess” — the ex-bourbon cask does real work here. Given the strength, a splash of water opens it up nicely and is worth doing before you write off any harshness. With only 207 bottles made, don’t expect to find a second one easily if you like it.
Buy it: The Whisky Exchange – Ninefold 3 Year Old Single Pot Still, Exclusive to TWE, around £59.95 for 70cl — with only 207 bottles made, it’s worth checking stock before you get too attached to the idea.
Ammos Aegean Vodka
The bottle alone earns a spot on the shelf, a matte ceramic-style finish with a hand-drawn goat and a cork stopper, built to look like it belongs on a taverna bar in the Cyclades. The vodka itself is built the same way: a wheat spirit base infused with olives and lemons, each macerated for two weeks, then cold-distilled under vacuum via rotary evaporation rather than heat, which is meant to preserve more of that delicate flavour.
The result is genuinely distinctive, briny and savoury from the olives, lifted by citrus, with a clean, mineral edge that most flavoured vodkas don’t get near. It’s built for sipping neat and cold or stirred into a dirty martini, where the built-in salinity does half the work for you; it’s less suited to a straightforward mixer drink, since the savoury note doesn’t disappear into juice or tonic the way a neutral vodka would. This is a vodka for people who already have a martini opinion.
Buy it: AMMOS Aegean Vodka, £62 for 70cl.
The verdict
Three bottles, three completely different moods: Bullards for something comforting and fruit-forward, Ninefold for anyone who wants a serious, small-batch rum with a genuine story, and Ammos for a savoury, conversation-starting martini. Worth having all three within reach.
