Hendrick's Carnival of Knowledge, Edinburgh

As part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (August 2nd - August 25th) Hendrick's brought up their much loved (I wonder why) travelling Gin Parlour to the city. The set up their very kooky shop in a £1 million townhouse fully furnished with old fashioned lamps, antique mirrors that took up half the wall and even one or two stuffed rodents to keep up the Victorian feel - it is fair to say Hendrick's don't do anything by halves. Unfortunately my poor, little iPhone wasn't quite up for taking non-blurry photos today so I couldn't quite get the fantastic decorations in but if you look around I'm sure you will find loads!

"I'll stick with gin. Champagne is just ginger ale that knows somebody." - Ceasefire, 1973

With tonic, without tonic, slice of lemon, slice of lime - I do not care as long as there is gin involved. The Quintessential Anthology of Gin event that we had tickets for was an hour long drinking and talking session upstairs and, before realising the free cocktail was given to you straight away, we bought some gin + tonics (obvious choice, topped with cucumber and all to bring out the lovely Hendrick's flavour) too, not complaining though - two drinks at once seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

It was actually a really interesting talk, too! Duncan McRae told us about the Gin Epidemic that I also learnt about in my Human Geography module last year (apparently gin used to be so cheap that people were just always too drunk!) and about why different company's gins taste different and gave us a taste of straight Hendrick's gin (yummy) and endangered (thinking of setting up a Save the Gin campaign? Urgent matter, in my opinion) juniper berries that gin is made from which pretty much tasted like gin and dirt combined.

 

They handed out some of these great, fake, old newspapers too which included everything from 'Unusual Horoscopes' to pretend marriage announcements!

The Carnival of Knowledge runs for a few days of the festival but can also be found around the UK in places like Brighton and next up in October, London. I would definitely recommend a trip to whichever event you can get too soonest, even if it is just to admire the decadent displays and taste magnificent cocktails out of teacups!

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