Gin Festival 2018 – Manchester

Yesterday I was feeling extremely lucky, we’d been invited to attend the Gin Festival 2018, in one of my favourite places in the world, Victoria Baths. It’s such a beautiful building and was a perfect venue for the 6th Gin Festival to be held in Manchester.

The Gin Festival currently tours all over the UK, showcasing the best craft gins from British and international gin makers.

This year the Gin Festival is running over 2 weekends in Manchester, with over 7630 gin lovers expected to partake in some delicious beverages. We went on the first weekend but I believe you can still buy tickets for this up-coming Easter holiday. See more details here if you like the look of it!

The event makes excellent use of Victoria Baths. With a foodie section in one pool, the main bar area in the middle pool and in the final pool you can chat to a selection of gin makers and try samples of their gin.

We headed to the main bar room to top up our wristbands with some credit as the Gin Festival operates a cashless system.  This was a really streamlined process where you can add your credit online or at the top-up stations at the venue. It really saves time and cuts queue time down immensely. Which means more time for gin!

There are 6 bars to choose from at the Gin Festival plus a cocktail bar. You get a handy festival booklet which tells you all the ginformation you’ll need about what gins are on which bars and what tonic will go best with them. The staff are also happy to advise on this if you’re unsure. I was feeling in a fruity mood and tried a lovely raspberry gin by Pinkster to start, which was accompanied by a light tonic.

We then went for a wander around the gin shop, where you can buy bottles of gin that have been featured at the festival.

My favourite part of the festival was getting to chat to some of the gin makers and trying samples of their gin.

We met with Brockmans, a premium gin which was really smooth, I could have quite happily drunk it straight without a mixer.

We then tried a gorgeous rhubarb gin from Slingsby, who are based in Harrogate – this was paired with a Schweppes ginger ale and worked wonderfully.

After trying a few more samples we wandered around Victoria Baths, appreciating the gorgeous building and taking a few more snaps.

A big thanks to the Gin Festival for inviting us a long to the event, we had a great time. As mentioned before, if you to go this coming weekend there are still a few tickets left  – just link here to purchase – I’d really recommend it. Plus it’s a bank holiday so you’ll have some time to recover. Winner!

 

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