“Oddly infused with rose and cucumber”, the phrase best describes Hendrick’s Gin, a Scottish gin known as a most unusual gin. It was all about cucumbers at Hendrick’s Gin event held on June 24 at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Hurlingham to celebrate World Cucumber Day.
If you are not familiar with Hendricks Gin, here are a few facts about this exotic Scottish Gin brand:
Hendricks Gin was produced in 1999 by William Grant & Sons, a Scottish company founded in 1887. The company also produces Scotch whisky and spirits.
Lesly Gracey, an employee of William Grant & Sons, created the recipe for this particular brand of gin, which is a blend of two distilled spirits and flavored with cucumbers and roses.
The gin is packaged in a dark glass bottle inspired from the dark glasses used to store precious liquids during the Victorian apothecaries’ era in the late 1800s.
The last descendant of the William Grant family, Janet Sheed Roberts, later named the Gin. She named it after an expert family gardener called Hendrick.
Now that we have given you some background information, we can get back to our event experience.
We arrived early at Four Points Sheraton and headed to the seventh floor where the event venue was located. Two lovely ladies welcomed us at the reception and confirmed our invitation to the exclusive event. We also received cucumbers as tokens to commemorate the world cucumber day before entering the venue.
Walking into the venue it was evident that every aspect of Hendrick’s Gin history was incorporated to create the overall set up and mood of the event. The section on the left was a lounge area with a few benches where guests could sit while the rest of the area was filled with cocktail tables where people could stand and mingle. Next to the lounge was a tub filled with water and roses, the first sign that Hendrick’s gin went all out to integrate everything it is known for in setting up the venue. The section provided a lovely and seemingly romantic section to take photos.
A photo booth was also set up and you could take more photos with a group of friends. The photos were instantly emailed to you, which was convenient since you could share them on your social networks while still at the event.
For refreshments, there were two bars; an upper and lower bar both with expert bartenders ready to mix your drinks. The drinks were garnished with cucumbers and you could always get a refill by presenting your token cucumber. You could also help yourself to the variety of bitings available, which included fish fingers, meatballs and jacket potatoes. There were waiters ready to serve you as well but it took a while as more guests began trickling in.
We got a table at the second section of the room and enjoyed meeting friends and other personalities at the event. We especially loved the entertainment bit where a guitarist played high tempo jazz. This gave the event a nostalgic ambience as if going back in time to the settler period. It was different and more immersive. We definitely loved how Dj Kace and the guitarist were in synchrony. There were also skilled jugglers ready to entertain you with their tricks as they flipped a handful of cucumbers into the air. You never got a chance to forget that we were celebrating World Cucumber Day.
Overall, we had a lot of fun at the event meeting people, taking photos, enjoying drinks and the music so we definitely would not mind getting another invite next year.
