It’s official: the world – and the supermarkets which feed us – have gone gin mad in our quest for new, novelty ways to get our festive hit of Mother’s Ruin.
The nation’s favourite fifth largest supermarket-cum-bargain-bucket, Aldi, has been nailing their stock intake, with lots of nice but affordable award-winning whiskies, low-cal wine and three-litre bottle of prosecco, released just in time to warm up your winter, as well as a wine advent calendar for Christmas.
But just when you thought Aldi couldn’t deliver any more of your stomach’s deepest desires, they go and serve up Sloe Gin Mince Tarts.
Hot on the heels of Yorkshire pudding burritos, the supermarket warmly welcomes the sloe gin mince pies.
Their new take on a traditional classic is a kind of food and drink hybrid pie, and while the concept of sprinkling your pudding with a little festive spirit isn’t exactly new, Aldi seem to have nailed this pan-substance style dish.
We’ve had the brandy-soaked Christmas pudding, but in case you haven’t been formally introduced, sloe gin is a red liqueur made with gin and sloe drupes, which are a small fruit relative of the plum.
Aldi have listed the mince pies as ‘a very sophisticated alternative to the traditional mince pies’, which contain a mincemeat and sloe gin filling, sprinkled with flaked almonds.
They’ve dubbed them ‘tarts’ presumably to justify the £2.29 per box price tag, even though everyone knows they’re pies down to the very filling.
The store has announced they’ll be rolling out the new addition to its arsenal very soon as autumn descends. You can find your nearest local Aldi online here.
Meanwhile, The Lakes Distillery have nailed the upper-end of the Christmas market with their gin-filled baubles.
The distillery elves have been toiling away in their workshop, to design these festive spirit-filled baubles, which contain two measures of their finest gin.
That’s 50ml of sweet Mother’s Ruin, to you and me. The baubles come in packs of one – which hardly seems like much fun if you ask me – and packs of six – which sounds like a Christmas party.
The magical Christmas gin bauble gift set, includes a selection of different gins, for the connoisseurs out there.
It features The Lakes Gin, The Lakes Sloe Gin – which has tasting notes of raspberry jam, cinnamon, orange citrus with hints of juniper and coriander – and The Lakes Damson Gin, which is made using fresh cherries, ripe plums and juniper berries with hints of spice.
The 20cl single baubles, which have an ABV of 43.7 per cent, retail at £19.95 and you can buy them directly from The Lakes Distillery website and social media pages.
But due to economy of drinking, the six-pack Lakes Gin Bauble Gift Set, which holds 6 measures of 5cl (ABV: 43.7 per cent), retails at a round £35.
You can throw in a shot glass too for £2.50, and they’re all available to pre-order now in time for Christmas – not to mention the fact the baubles will look like beautiful twinkly fairy lights, festooning your tree this year.
But with all of this novelty booze-fuelled food and festivity, perhaps we’ve bitten off more than we can chew?
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.