Between blotch and blok

I finally got round to making this year's sloe gin. M had gone out to buy the gin as the ancient bottle of Gordon's was insufficiently full. I'd told him, since I was going to contaminate the gin with fruit and sugar, not to go to anything too upmarket (both gin and vodka seem to come in much more interesting forms these days -- and sometimes even organically produced). He came home with this. Now, I'm not actually particularly fond of gin. But opening the bottle released the most amazing botanical bouquet, nothing like your bog standard Mother's Ruin. It wasn't, apparently, more expensive. So, organic gin, organic golden caster sugar, sloes picked on an organic farm -- organic sloe gin!

Less usefully, due to my not looking at which soft drinks bottle I was picking up, I diluted my Highland Park with a splash of Tesco's sparkling water with apple and raspberry flavour. Not the choice I'd have actively made. Nor one I'm going to repeat. Very strange (well I couldn't really tip a decent Scotch down the sink) and definitely requiring a second to drink, this time with the correct Canada Dry, to wash away the taste.