Cocktail hour: Sloane's Dry Gin

Like Kat, I've recently moved houses. Rather than fussing about my books however, I've become obsessional about all the lovely Art Deco style details in this 1930s flat in an unlikely corner of South London. There's a beautiful stone fireplace, and some fabulous original tiles in the bathroom. So my first thoughts on getting this bottle of Sloane's dry gin weren't so much "great, gin!" but "ooo look the bottle matches the tiles in the bathroom" and "wouldn't a gin and tonic look wonderful perched on top of the fireplace" (where in fact I took the picture below).

Like this classy flat, Sloane's Dry Gin is one classic gin. Once I stopped cooing over how pretty it looked, I found out it had won the title of world's best gin. Wow. Unlike the last gin I sampled, Hoxton Gin, this gin is a pretty traditional dry gin - and delicious for it. A lot of effort goes into each bottle with each of its nine botanicals (a very pleasing list of coriander, vanilla, orange and lemon peel, cardamom, angelica, oris root, cassia bark, liquorice and, of course, juniper) are individually distilled before they are brought together. It makes for a pretty perfect G and T (at at £24.95 from The Whisky Exchange it's also cheaper than my usual Hendricks gin of choice).

The name is inspired by Hans Sloane: botanist and the man who gives his name to some of Chelsea's most exclusive areas. I think the finer qualities of this drink are wasted on Chelsea's braying rich and it requires some Streatham-style mixing instead. To fit with the classic 1930s environment of this new flat, I'm going to use it to have a old fashioned gin fizz. And, as a special treat, and because it goes so well with the tiles, I might just have it in the bath. It's a drink that inspires such level of indulgence.