Pairing Cigars & Alcohol – Four Pillars Fresh Yuzu
Cigars and alcohol. Two luxury products that go hand in hand, and sometimes even meet on business level. Aging tobacco in whisky, rum, or cognac barrels is a practice several brands do to achieve extra flavour to the wrapper for certain lines. The famous bourbon brand Maker’s Mark has their own cigar, sold in tubes with the signature wax coating. Drew Estate works with Pappy van Winkle and used to make Kahlua cigars. Mombacho has the Diplomatico series. General Cigars works with Sazerac, which resulted in Fireball cigars, Weller by Cohiba and collaborations with Buffalo Trace. And there is the Diesel Whisky Row, a collaboration with Rabbit Hole Distilleries. Fratello Cigars also sells craft beer. Most famous are probably the Cuban collaboration between Martell Cognac and Cohiba. Dominique London, the European retailer with more than 20 shops in the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and the Canary Islands takes it one step further. They bought a distillery in Wales and produce gin, rum, vodka and liquors, and bottle whisky.
Four Pillars Fresh Yuzu
Four Pillars is a distillery in Victoria, Australia. It all started back in 2013 with three mates and one extraordinary copper still. Six years later, in 2019, Four Pillars Gin was named the world’s leading gin producer by the IWSC in London. They won again in 2020, making Australia’s favourite gin officially the world’s best. In 2022 Four Pillars became Australia’s first certified carbon neutral gin distillery, and later in the year their sustainability efforts were recognised on a global scale with the IWSC awarding them the inaugural Green Spirits Initiative trophy.
Four Pillars is known for their odd gins. On Cigar Inspector we wrote about the Olive gin before and this time we are trying the Fresh Yuzu. Yuzu is a south east Asian citrus and it’s getting popular in the last few years. Roku Gin uses some Yuzu in their ingredients and I recently acquired a dry curacao made with Moroccan Yuzu as well. I’m a big fan of the fruit, so when I saw this bottle at a duty free shop at an airport, I just had to buy it. Four Pillars did three batches of this gin on a limited edition basis, before turning it into a core flavour made with locally produced yuzu fruit.
Neat
The nose gives a strong juniper aroma, with added citrus from the yuzu, pine and a floral freshness. The gin itself is warming, yet bright and zingy. Yuzu has a bright flavour, a mixture between lemon, mandarin orange, grapefruit and cumquat. The other aromatics used for the recipe, like ginger and turmeric, give the gin depth. This is a fresh and pleasant gin that will go well with a creamy Connecticut Shade cigar, a thicker one like a Perdomo 10th Anniversary Champagne in a Gordo size for example, or A.J. Fernandez New World Connecticut with a big ring gauge.
Gin & Tonic
The juniper is still on the nose with citrus but milder, somewhat muted due to the tonic water and the ice. I switched drinking my gin & tonic from Collins glasses to Copa glasses. It feels more luxurious to drink it from a big bowl, it feels nicer and it seems that the wide opening gives the aroma more of an area to escape. The Gin & Tonic with the Four Pillars Fresh Yuzu is so much more refreshing than any other G&T I tried. And that’s an achievement as the G&T is always refreshing, but the yuzu adds another level of citrus freshness. Even more than while drinking the gin neat. I would pair this with a cigar with a nutty flavour profile, which means a corojo wrapper, or something medium bodied with a Habano wrapper. Nothing bold, nothing earthy and nothing too strong either.
And now for the gin tonic recipe:
2 ounces of 60ml of gin
4 ounces or 120ml of Tonic water
Fill a highball, Collins or Copa glass with ice. Add the gin, then the tonic and stir gently.
Fresh Yuzu Gin Fizz
I got this riff on the Gin Fizz from the Four Pillars website. And I am surprised how much colour the 2 dashes of Angostura create in the cocktail. With a clear spirit, clear syrup and just some fresh lime juice you’d expect a yellow cocktail but due to the Angostura the cocktail has a nice pastel colour, pinkish. The egg white creates a nice thick foam on top.
The mellow nose is mostly citrus, but mild. The flavour is tart but not too tart, fresh citrus, balanced out by the simple syrup. The juniper, ginger and other flavours of the fin work well with the Angostura bitters to cut through the citrus, balance the cocktail and add depth. This might be a cocktail that could be hard to pair with cigars due to the sour flavours, yet I think a stronger cigar with woody of earthy notes might work well. Joya de Nicaragua Antaño Dark Corojo comes to mind. For Cuban cigars, earthy equals the Montecristo #2 for me.
And now for the Fresh Yuzu Gin Fizz recipe:
1 ½ ounces or 45ml of Four Pillars Fresh Yuzu Gin
1 ounce or 30ml of Lime Juice, freshly squeezed
¾ ounce or 22 ½ml of simple syrup
2 dash of Angostura bitters
optional: egg white
Soda water to top
If you use the egg white, place all the ingredients minus the soda water in a cocktail shaker and dry shake (shake without ice) for 20 seconds. Then add ice and shake again. Strain into a chilled rocks glass and top with soda water.
If you don’t use the egg white, place all ingredients minus the soda water in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake. Strain into a chilled rocks glass and top with soda water.
Inspector X
