Yummy umami: Global savoury spirits to try

Look for these savoury spirits on your travels

Inspired by the wild and salty Norfolk coast, Bullard’s Coastal Gin is handcrafted using foraged ingredients like marsh samphire and Douglas fir pine needles. Facebook.com/bullardsgin photo

If you like seaweed-kissed Sheringham Seaside and Isle of Harris gins, try maritime-inspired U.K. bottles like Bullard’s Coastal Gin, Fishers Gin, Da Mhile Organic Seaweed Gin and Mermaid Salt Vodka, as well as North Vancouver’s Copperpenny Gin No. 006 Oyster Shell (a collaboration with Fanny Bay Oysters).

Martini-friendly olive gins include B.C.’s own Deep Cove Mediterranean plus international gins like Gin Mare, Portobello Road Savoury Gin and Four Pillars Olive Leaf Gin.

Drink your vegetables: Piger Henricus from Quebec’s Les Subversifs and James Gin Asian Parsnip Gin elevate the humble root vegetable. Make it a salad with Piedmont white-truffled-infused Cambridge Truffle Gin and some Tomates liqueur from Domaine Cazottes in France.

Next-level umami: Eimverk in Iceland uses dried sheep dung to smoke the barley for its Floki single malt; Audemus Umami Gin from France features caper and Parmesan flavours; Butcher’s Gin “marinates” meat-rub botanicals and a little dried meat in the spirit; and the gins from Holyrood Distillery in Edinburgh (co-founded by Calgarians) showcase variations on juniper, sea salt and beeswax.

—by Charlene Rooke

Charlene Rooke

Charlene Rooke is a Certified Specialist of Spirits and a Moonshine University-trained craft distiller who writes for enRoute, Taste and Food & Drink. She drinks stirred rye Manhattans on the rocks.