Ableforth's has built a quietly formidable reputation in the craft spirits space, and their Bathtub Gin line remains one of the more recognisable names in British gin — owing as much to the charmingly lo-fi brown paper packaging as to what's inside the bottle. The Cask Aged expression takes the core Bathtub concept and pushes it somewhere altogether more contemplative, and it's a move that speaks directly to the barrel-aged gin trend that's been gaining serious traction over the past few years.
A Barrel-Aged Gin With Commercial Savvy
At 43.3% ABV, this sits at a smart strength — enough to hold its own against the influence of wood without tipping into cask-forward territory that alienates the gin purist. Barrel-aged gins walk a fine line: lean too far into the whisky-adjacent warmth and you lose the botanical identity that makes gin what it is. Ableforth's appears to understand that tension. The Bathtub brand has always traded on a cold-compounded, multi-botanical approach, and subjecting that to cask ageing adds a layer of complexity that positions it neatly between the classic juniper-led London Dry crowd and the darker, more experimental end of the market.
At £32.50, the pricing is shrewd — undercutting several barrel-aged competitors while offering genuine category credibility. It's the sort of bottle that earns its place on a back bar and starts conversations. I'd score this at 7.8 out of 10: a well-executed expression that knows exactly what it wants to be, even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of more established cask-aged offerings.
Best served: Over a single large ice cube with a dash of orange bitters — let the cask character breathe. This is also a bartender's friend in a Negroni, where the wood-aged warmth plays beautifully against Campari's bitterness.
