Well yesterday I went to a gin festival. I made several mistakes. 1 did not have a big meal before. 2 did not factor in that lots of small samples quickly add up. I did at least eat food there and drank a bit of water, but it was very far from enough. Here are some of the gins I tried:
All up 32 different samples and several of them I tried straight and then another sample with tonic water. The saying 'way too much' definitely applied. Especially as there were a lot of navy strength (>58%) ones.
All the ones I tried were from Australia or New Zealand and lots had won international awards (in particular the Four Pillars gins). The unfiltered Poltergeist gin was a notable flavour. There was some nice variations on the classic gin and a lot that tried to be very traditional. I very much recommend going to such an event, but take it easy and do not try and sample all the available gins (I only tried about half of the available ones).