Damson Gin

Damsons arrive in September and they don't stick around. A brief, sharp, dark little fruit with a stone that won't let go and a skin that puckers the mouth if you try to eat one raw. Useless for most things. Perfect for this.

I make damson gin every year, without fail, in the first proper week of autumn when the mornings have turned cold enough to wear a jumper in the kitchen. It's not really a recipe. It's three ingredients in a jar, and then time does the rest. You prick the fruit, tip in the sugar, pour over the gin, and put the jar at the back of a cupboard where you can mostly forget about it. Eight weeks later, maybe twelve, you have something that tastes like the whole of autumn has been pressed into a bottle.

The colour is the first thing. Within a day or two the gin has gone pink. Within a week it's the colour of garnets. By the time you strain and bottle it in December, it's so deep and dark it looks almost black against the light, and when you hold a glass up to a lamp the edges burn red. It smells of fruit and almond and something warm you can't quite name.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first year I made it: start in September, open in December, keep one bottle back for the following Christmas. I've kept to that rule ever since. A bottle of last year's damson gin, opened on a dark evening with someone you like, is one of the better reasons I can think of for paying attention to the seasons.