6 Pretty Purple Gins to Try Now
Empress gin cocktail
If you’ve tried pink gin, are you ready for purple gin? The color can come from violets, hibiscus, grapes, or other purple fruits such as berries. Tom and Tina Warner of Warner’s Distillery in Harrington, England make a naturally flavored spiced blackberry gin that sells out every autumn.
Make Way for Butterfly Pea Flowers
Butterfly pea flower
When the FDA approved the use of butterfly pea flowers in 2021, it quickly started showing up in cocktails. Durham Distillery jumped at the chance to be one of the first modern American gins to include the stunningly deep blue botanical that has a very subtle earthy flavor, but also changes color when exposed to acid. Says Founder, President and CEO Melissa Katrincic, “The addition of butterfly pea flowers in Conniption Kinship adds a layer to our story that I think is a beautiful illustration of how science and art are inherently intertwined. The purple shifting in cocktails to shades of pink or blue is a fun way for us to connect and showcase art in the scientific reaction of a pH change.”
Butterfly pea flower drink
“Everybody needs more colorful cocktails,” says bartender Krista Orlebeck of Chicago’s Lazy Bird and Speed Rack 11th Season Champion. Even more fun is a color changing cocktail, like when you add citrus to those pea flower anthocyanins. “You can awe people by stirring in lemon juice tableside. It’s the fun, magic of bartending,” she says.
To make your own butterfly pea flower syrup for purple drinks at home, Orlebeck recommends steeping the flowers in hot water as you would tea, then combine that with an equal part of sugar. “There’s a nifty new product called B’Lure that’s a pea flower concentrate. It’s a dropper bottle, you can pop it in like bitters.”
How to Mix Purple Gin
The ideal cocktail to show off your purple gin collection should be neutral in color and simple in structure. “Purple gins don’t have the color potency of, for example, a blue curacao,” says Orlebeck. “I’d love to see a purple gin and tonic in a big goblet, or a purple negroni.” The former would change color when the citrus garnish was squeezed in, the latter could be mixed with dry vermouth and Luxardo Bitter Bianco, a clear Italian apertivo.
Purple Gins to Try
Empress 1908 Indigo Gin
Empress 1908 Indigo Gin
The reigning monarch of purple gins, at least in North America, Empress 1908 Indigo launched in 2017 out of the Fairmont Empress Hotel in Victoria BC, and lit up the internet with its pea flower purple to pink cocktails. It contains 8 botanicals and was inspired by famous tea service at the Fairmont. No artificial colors are used, and the deep indigo comes from the butterfly pea blossom. The color of the gin changes from bright lavender, to soft pink, and even fuchsia depending on the mixer.
Conniption Kinship Gin photo credit Forrest Mason Photography
In late 2022, Durham Distillery broke out their Kinship Gin, with a Prince purple hue and complex modern botanicals, which quickly outsold their other SKU’s. This Conniption, says Founder Katrincic, “is crafted with a juicier and brighter finish” than their American Dry and their Navy Strength. It shows notes of honeysuckle and fresh citrus thanks to the addition of cold distilled fresh lemon and orange peels toward the end of the process.
Malaria gin
Argentina’s Malaria Gin, named for the curative properties of quinine in gin’s partner, tonic water, offers an indigo hue and balanced floral botanicals. The Victorian looking bottle and label add to the historic charm of the product. Containing 17 botanicals and infused with flowers, this 80 proof gin also contains no artificial colors and develops over a series of four distillations.
Generous Gin Purple
This French producer boasts of grape-based anthocyanins and polyphenols from grape skin in the light lavender-hued version of its multicolored gin line, purportedly with a red wine bodied texture and bringing healthy antioxidants to the mix. The flavor comes from pink grapefruit and Timut pepper in addition to the classic juniper.
Gin Lane 1751 Violet Gin
Gin Lane 1751 Violet Gin
Inspired by the classic Aviation cocktail, which gets its color and flavor from Creme de Violette, this British entry will appeal to nostalgic limeys who remember their Aunties offering tins of flowery Parma Violet tablets as a sweet. (For an even deeper hit of violet perfume, Zymurgorium’s Original Sweet Violet Gin Based Liqueur should do the trick.)
McQueen and the Violet Fog Ultraviolet Edition
McQueen’s distillers in Jundiai, Brazil add hibiscus and red berries to the botanical list of their original gin for rich tropical color and a deep, fruity sweetness. Its base spirit comes from local sugar cane.