The Perfect Summer Gin

I can haz? Edinburgh gin trio pack, £35, John Lewis

Soz chaps - I've gone off gin over the last couple of years. Having drunk it happily for the best part of 12 years, around early 2012 I started thinking that maybe I'd reached the limits of what I could do with some juniper (and that includes wearing gin perfume!)

But oh my good golly wow. My tastebuds have received the most joyous awakening with Alex Nicol's Edinburgh Gin. He spent years working at Plymouth Gin before working with Glenmorangie, started making his own whiskies in the 70s and has been making this cracking range of gins for the past seven years. Excellent CV work that man!

As well as the cleanest-tasting gin I've tried in years (with a gorgeous whisper of citrus along the top), he makes the most phenomenal fruit gins which are light enough to provide the summer equivalent to winter's heavier sloe gins and hedgerow liquors.

This Perthshire raspberry gin is absolutely sensational. It's made in small batches with Perthshire raspberries and sugar - 30% compared to 50% for sloe gin. It's beautifully thought up and it shows: I've got to say, I haven't tasted something I instantly loved this much since I first encountered Sipsmith Damson Vodka. It's £10 for 20cl, or £17.99 for 50cl.

This elderflower gin  is absolutely stunning. Like the raspberry, the nose is purest fruit (or flower in this case), and the alcohol is smooth and soft rather than bitter. It's utterly delicious - they recommend you pop it in a long glass with some squeezed lime juice and soda. But you could easily drink it neat until you fall over. It's £16.50.

If you can't make up your mind, you can get a duo pack of 20cl raspberry and elderflower for £20. It would be an AMAZING present. Unless you get the trio pack listed up top <3

 This is the flagship gin I was talking about at the start of the post, but I adored the raspberry and elderflower versions with such extreme excitement that I had to run them first. A 20cl bottle is £12 and a 70cl is £27.95. It really is a cast-iron stunner. Alec recommends whacking it in the freezer, taking a potato peeler to an orange and letting the zest drop into the drink. Oh, and drinking it neat if you like. *falls over onto the floor*

 I know quite a few gin enthusiasts who hail from this fair Scottish city, and this fantastic mug would be a lovely present. The large version is £10 and the small is £9. And if you run out of glasses, just fill it with gin and let people think it's Ribena.