Love Warrior Gin

Flavor Profile

Adrift Distillers’ Love Warrior Gin is a collaboration with Love Warrior Gardens. The gin’s concept is simple. To capture the taste of the Pacific Northwest through botanical selection.

The 2018 limited edition collab uses native plants such as Hawthorn, Spruce Tips and Elderflower. The base spirit is a neutral base distilled from grain and Love Warrior Gin is bottled at 42.5% ABV.

We’re reviewing BATCH 001.

Tasting Notes

Immediately, the nose of Love Warrior Gin Gin has bright terpey pine, with sweet jammy notes underneath. You can pick out some of the rose hips, the elderflower in addition to notes of Rhododendron flowers and Meyer Lemon zests.

The floral character of the nose continues on the palate. Love Warrior Gin begins with a bit of heat building to a mid-palate that is coolly juniper-forward.

With the juniper taking hold, the finish has moments of blueberry and huckleberry jams, a hint of vanilla custard and pine blossom.

Love Warrior Gin is a bit astringent, with the base spirit adding quite a bit of warmth but also with the effect of drying out the palate when sipped neat.

Cocktails

While certainly a bit contemporary, Love Warrior Gin works well for fans of contemporary floral styles in a wide range of drinks, and is especially well -complemented by citrus. I recommend the Tom Collins, Gimlet, and Gin and Bitter lemon.

It also works really nicely in a Martini, especially with a twist. If you’re a fan of some of the more mainstream floral gins like Nolet Silver— Love Warrior Gin is worth taking a look at.

Overall, Love Warrior Gin

There was a point where it seemed that spice-forward contemporary gins would always outnumber floral-forward contemporary gins on the shelf; despite the public’s appetite for the floral flavor profile. But with distillers like Adrift partnering to create exciting, evocative floral-forward gins— and ones that don’t forget the juniper either— we might be entering an exciting time for flowers and gin.

Fans of classic gin will like the way that Love Warrior keeps juniper as part of the equation. They even amp up it’s up presence with the spruce tips. But the floral notes and juniper work well together. Despite it begin squarely contemporary, fans of classic gins who are willing to give floral-contemporary another try— Love Warrior may be the one that wins you over.

Recommended. 

Awards