Christmas Made Easy: Giving the Gift of GIN this Festive Season

Much as I adore it, I do try to avoid mentioning the C-word - Christmas - until the end of November or so. It really isn't easy. The Boots Christmas catalogue has been in store so long I've had ample time to select which Soap & Glory gift set I require this year (the twisty-tin with ladies on, just in case you've got a spare item in your 3-for-2 basket). A colleague admitted this week to having had Christmas pudding for his tea on Monday. There is a box of biscuits in the staffroom, which makes no direct mention of Christmas but which bears a drawing in which several of the biscuits are sporting festive hats. All this, and we've not even had Halloween yet.

And to be honest, the presents are the least interesting bit of Christmas once you're a grown-up with a house full of tat and very little room to put any more (twisty-lady-tin excepted, obviously); this means it's hard to come up with a meaningful answer when people ask you what you want. Well, no longer, thanks to a PR email I received a couple of weeks ago: had I thought of gin as the perfect Christmas gift? Astonishingly, I hadn't - but it makes perfect sense. If there's nothing you really need, the whole point of a present is for it to be a treat that makes you happy: and if that isn't the very definition of gin, I really don't know what is (bourbon or rum maybe, but that's for a different post).

Thus a happy quartet of four mini gins arrived through the post, along with the promise that there would be one here for every palate. Obviously I immediately broke up the little family by opening and drinking them - purely in the interests of providing the following Christmas gift guide, of course.

BLOOM Gin. This comes in a beautiful bottle and has a slightly floral flavour that explains why it is so beloved of Manchester cocktail bars. BLOOM is distilled by one of the world's few female Master Gin Distillers, Joanne Moore, who is celebrating her 10th Anniversary as Master Distiller this year. This, along with the three main botanicals that go into BLOOM Gin - the flowers of chamomile and honeysuckle and the citrus fruit pomelo - perhaps explains why this is suggested as being a perfect gift for a woman. I'm not sure about this as I think most people would enjoy this gin, but as long as that woman is me I don't really mind.

Available from: Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Harvey Nichols and Ocado. RRP £24.00 for 70cl. ABV: 40%.

Opihr Oriental Spiced Gin. This is billed as a unique and different style of London Dry Gin made using exotic botanicals, herbs and spices; it also comes in the most beautiful bottle. I'd had this once in a cocktail and decided I didn't like it, but it turns out it must have been the cocktail I didn't like - this makes a very fine gin and tonic indeed and I am converted. My boyfriend has favoured this gin for some time, but warns that the attractive tassel that decorates the bottle can be used as a rope by cunning dinosaurs with a taste for Opihr.

Available from: Tesco, Morrison's, Waitrose, Ocado, Booths and seven regional Harvey Nichols stores nationwide and 31Dover.com. RRP: £23.00 for 70cl. ABV 40%.

Thomas Dakin Gin. I'd had this one before as well, courtesy of Manchester legend Alix Walker, and been impressed - it comes in a sexy apothecary-style bottle and is nice and savoury thanks to botanicals including horseradish and English coriander (which explains why it's so perfect in a Bloody Mary). And, it's named after the forefather of English gin, which makes it educational too.

Available from: Waitrose and Harvey Nichols, Booths, Ocado.com, 31Dover.com, GinFoundry.com. RRP: £29.00 for 70cl. ABV: 42%.

Greenall's. This one has a freshness thanks to its rounded juniper notes and mature citrus flavours, but was for me the least interesting of the four. That said, I would much prefer this to the Gordon's (particularly as they are similarly priced) that my mum uses for our lunchtime gin and tonic on Christmas Day, so she may well find that Santa pops a bottle of this in her stocking this year. Even better, it comes in a gift box that looks like a green phone box, so Santa may as well bring me one as well while he's at it.

Available at Waitrose, Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Master of Malt. RRP: £15.00 for 70cl. ABV: 37.5%.

In short, I've made Christmas easy for you - you're welcome. And if you can't decide which one to buy me, may I helpfully draw your attention to the fact my birthday is in November - once again, you're welcome.

- the gin samples were sent to me for review purposes (thanks to MPR Communications, who also provided some of the photos you see here - the professional ones and those without dinosaurs), but as I think this post makes clear, this will end up costing me dearly in the gin aisle from now on.

Manchester Three Rivers Gin at the City of Manchester Distillery: New Premium Gin Celebrates Manchester's Past

Manchester is, of course, wonderful, as any Mancunian (adopted or otherwise) will be pleased to tell you with little or no prompting. I moved here at 17, lured by two revolutions: the Industrial one which I had learned about in History lessons at school, seduced by the march of progress in the form of canals, and railways, and the enormous belching mills and factories; and the cultural one that I had learned about by riffling through my sister's record collection, full of moody black and white covers and even moodier black and white songs. Nor have I have ever regretted moving here, despite sporadic accusations from other, lesser cities that Manchester's glory is all in the past, a relic from another time.

This is clearly nonsense, as one of the things that Manchester does best is combine past and present - as even a cursory glance at the city centre skyline will make abundantly clear. This approach is also very evident in the new City of Manchester Distillery, located underneath one of the railway arches in the Green Quarter and home to Manchester Three Rivers Gin. This is the city centre's first dedicated gin distillery in modern times and aims to blend a sense of Manchester's glorious history with the current renaissance in small batch gin - the name refers to the three waterways (the Irwell, Irk and Medlock) that played such a huge part in Manchester's development into the city we know today. All of this is celebrated in the video that visitors to the Gin Experience will be greeted with and which we watched at the recent press launch - a video that speaks volumes about the passion of Master Distiller Dave Rigby and which brought several tears to several eyes (must have had something in mine, I reckon).

Dave began his career as a university lecturer but now spends his time with his beloved custom-built 450l copper pot Arnold Holstein still, named Angel after the distillery's location in the shadow of Angel Meadow. He produces all the gin himself, and very good it is too - I've never been able to enjoy gin neat, but the inclusion of oats leads to an oily sweetness that makes Three Rivers palatable even on its own. Dave suggests serving the gin with cherries in order to pick up the natural sweetness of the gin, which combines 11 botanicals and derives its smoothness from vanilla, cinnamon, cardamon and almond as well as the oats. Three Rivers Gin is already available in a growing number of Manchester bars and independent and online retailers (Manchester House has it behind the bar and you can pick up a bottle at Hanging Ditch), but the distillery is also positioning itself as an interactive visitor attraction. The City of Manchester Gin Experience offers a guided tour of the distillery, four drinks (all gin-based, of course) and - best of all - the chance to create a bespoke 700ml bottle of gin to take home using the mini Alembic copper pot stills. I am, naturally, beyond desperate to make my own gin, but had to make do with eyeing up these cute mini stills and drinking a Three Rivers and tonic, pretending I'd just made it.

The experience is not cheap at £95, but this is a chance to see (and taste) a seriously good gin being made by lovely, passionate people who want to share their love of gin and of Manchester and its history. And any cultural experience that leads to going home on the bus carrying your own bottle of gin is absolutely fine with me.

- Full details of the City of Manchester Gin Experience are available through the Three Rivers website, and the distillery can be found at 21 Red Bank Parade, Manchester M4 4HF.