The World's Most Unusual Gin Bottles
Unusual gin bottles will make you look twice.
Before you even think about what is inside the bottle, they command your full attention. But what makes a gin bottle unusual? Most unusual gin bottles break one rule - the material, the format or how it opens. We are going to cover eight of the most unusual gin bottles, so you can see everything that the weird and wonderful world of unusual gin bottles has to offer. Here are the eight at a glance:
- Ableforth’s Bathtub Gin - wrapped in brown paper
- Fallen Angel Blood Orange Gin - a ceramic devil’s head
- Dr Squid Gin - an engraved copper flask
- Gin Sul - white stoneware
- Gin Is Dead - manga artwork and a death kanji closure
- One Key Gin - a key hidden in the base
- Procera Gin - hand-blown glass with no label
- Snow Leopard Gin - Mount Everest in crystal
1. Ableforth's Bathtub Gin
A bottle wrapped in brown paper? It doesn’t sound like it should work, but Ableforth's Bathtub Gin makes sure it does. It almost looks like something handed across a chemist's counter a century ago, but it has a unique charm that really does catch your attention on the shelf. Underneath the brown paper is a plain apothecary bottle. The gin is made in Kent by cold compounding, which means the botanicals are steeped in the spirit rather than distilled with it.
2. Fallen Angel Blood Orange Gin
Then a bottle that looks back at you and stares into your soul. Fallen Angel Blood Orange Gin is poured from a gloss white ceramic devil-shaped head, which is adorned with horns and accompanied by a grinning smile. It’s the sort of thing that has to get moved out of sight when the grandchildren visit. What of the gin itself? Well, it is a mix of classic gin botanicals with blood orange and is best served very cold. There is also a blackcurrant edition in a purple version of the same bottle, for anyone who wants a pair of devils.
3. Dr Squid Gin
Okay, now you could argue that Dr Squid Gin doesn’t really come in a bottle. But what does that matter when we are talking about a flat-sided copper flask, engraved all over with scenes from the folklore and history around its Cornish distillery? The illustration work is fascinating and like nothing we’ve quite seen on any other gin. On the label stands a gentleman in a top hat, with an octopus where his body should be. The gin inside is made with a small amount of real squid ink. It pours black and turns pink when the tonic goes in.
4. Gin Sul
Gin Sul is bottled in white stoneware, which gives it a distinctive look. It has a traditional aesthetic thanks to the clay, but the blue typeface and subtle illustration work help to bring a modern feel. The gin itself is distilled in Hamburg, in 100-litre batches, but its heart lies in a different country entirely. The ingredients are inspired by south-west Portugal, including lemons from the Algarve. Of everything here, it is the bottle most likely to end up holding flowers.
5. Gin Is Dead
From here, the bottles are glass, and the glass gets bolder as we go. Gin Is Dead, from The Church Farm Craft Company, takes its look from manga, with artwork of a lone figure against a red spiral and the kanji for death on the closure. Twines of two thicknesses are double-tied around the neck and worked into the closure, so the tie stays with the bottle long after it's opened. The name came from a question the distillers asked when they set up… Is traditional gin dead? Their answer is a juniper-led London Dry.
6. One Key Gin
One Key Gin looks less like a bottle than a block of cobalt blue glass, tall and square-edged, with its name across the top. The trick is underneath, and it’s a charming twist. A key is stored in the base, and you need it to get into the gin. Inside is a Slovenian dry gin with juniper, coriander and ginger.
7. Procera Gin
Procera's bottle has no label at all. The bottle itself is short, with a long, leather-clad neck, and an oversized stopper. The main mark on the glass is a dot of colour telling you which gin is inside. A truly minimalist design that results in a gin bottle that is as refined as it is unusual. Each one is blown by hand from recycled glass in Kenya, so no two are quite the same. The gin is distilled in Nairobi, from fresh juniper picked in the Kenyan highlands. It's as close as any bottle here comes to the last one, when it comes to provenance, class and pure elegance. We love it.
8. Snow Leopard Gin
Now for the last on the list, but by no means least. Snow Leopard Gin. The bottle takes the form of Mount Everest and is topped with a beautiful Snow Leopard sculpture inspired by Stephen Rew, Wildlife Artist of the Year. Sparkling with high-clarity crystalline, each bottle of Snow Leopard Gin is created using a mix of traditional glassmaking techniques and modern engineering methods. Mouth-blown and hand-polished, this bottle represents the pinnacle of craftsmanship and art. Unusual meets extraordinary.
Then there are the first bottles. The first 50 come with an atomiser holding distilled leaves from a rare Tibetan juniper plant, to mist over the glass before you pour. The first 25 orders also include two crystal glasses hand-blown by Stuart Wiltshire, whose past commissions include lamps at St James's Palace and Buckingham Palace.
Inside is a British blended gin at 53% ABV, made from eight botanicals that each tell the story of the Snow Leopard's ascent through the Himalayan mountains. Turmeric, coriander seed and ginger root sit over juniper, with lychee, Nam Doc Mai mango, kaffir lime and fresh coriander leaf. There will only ever be 200 bottles. A true limited edition gin. £500 from every sale goes to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. A total of £100,000 when all bottles are sold.
Why the Most Beautiful Gin Bottles Are Kept
Admit it, we’ve all held onto a bottle we love at one point. But it takes something brilliant, beautiful and (usually) unusual to earn its place on the mantelpiece, long after the last drop has been poured. A grinning devil's head is a hard thing to put in the bin, and so is a copper flask dripping in Cornish folklore.
That's why gin bottle design matters so much to the people behind it. A fancy bottle might catch your eye in a shop, but a truly special one earns its place at home. The rarest go on to become collectable gin bottles in their own right, valued for how they were made as much as for what was poured from them.
Snow Leopard Gin was made with that in mind. Open it, pour it or keep it sealed. The choice is yours. But get it right, because there will only ever be 200 bottles. So, what are you going to do?
