World Gin Day is upon us — everything gets junipery come the 11th of June and that means it’s best to get acquainted with some of the great gins doing the rounds.

This year marks the eighth year that World Gin Day will be celebrated, so you’ll want to get your bar in on the fun.

To help you do that we’ve rounded up seven of the finer gins on the market, and we’ve also got three banging gin cocktail recipes here as well: one strong-suited number in the Fifty-Fifty; another, the exotic Bird of Paradise from Charles H. Baker’s legendary tome, The Gentleman’s Companion; and a little softer number, and one of the best ways to drink sloe gin that you can find, courtesy of the Charlie Chaplin.

Fifty-Fifty

45ml Star of Bombay
45ml dry vermouth

Stir down and serve with an olive.

How best to mark World Gin Day? This is how: a Martini. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a better style than the wet style, like in this Fifty-Fifty. Gin and vermouth — they belong together, and they share more than a few botanicals. So why on earth would you do the blasphemous thing and ditch the vermouth?

Bird of Paradise Fizz

60ml Rogue Society Classic
45ml fresh lime juice
15ml raspberry syrup
2 drops orange flower water
1 egg white
soda to top

Dry shake all ingredients except soda, then shake again with ice. Strain into a collins glass and top with soda.

This is one of Charles H. Baker’s more exotic recipes, from his Gentleman’s Companion.

Charlie Chaplin

30ml Hayman’s Sloe Gin
30ml apricot brandy
30ml fresh lime juice
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled coupette.

This recipe is one from the Old Waldorf Astoria Bar Days book, published in 1931, and sees sloe gin mixing with lime and apricot brandy — it’s a delicious, moreish drink in which sloe gin plays the starring role.

7 winning gins to toast World Gin Day with

Star of Bombay
Using a slow-distillation method, the 10 Bombay botanicals (plus by ambrette seed and bergamot orange peel) undergo greater extraction resulting in a fuller flavoured gin, bottled at 47.5%.
Bacardi-Martini

Rogue Society Classic
Big, fresh nose, pronounced aromatic intensity. Juniper, orange peel and deep spice dominate. Vibrant in the mouth, with citrus and juniper. Smooth but crisp on the palate. Long and flavour filled finish.
SouthTrade

Bombay Sapphire
Credited with reigniting interest in gin, it’s a soft, elegant dry gin thanks to their vapour distillation process: each of the ten botanicals are held in perforated copper pots in the still, with steam from distillation passing through them.
Bacardi-Martini

Hayman’s Sloe Gin
Sloe berries are steeped in Hayman’s gin for many months, before being blended with natural sugars; it has intense plummy aromas, hints of almond nuttiness.
SouthTrade

Broker’s Gin
You don’t get much more London Dry than this brand. Launched in 1998, it adopted that icon of English banking, the bowler’s hat, and is based on a recipe that dates back 200 years. So it’s a traditional gin from the modern era, then.
island2island

Hendrick’s Gin
Hendrick’s is an emblematic gin distilled by master distiller Lesley Gracie. Rose and cucumber botanicals, eccentric branding and the slice of cucumber in their G&Ts set it apart.
William Grant & Sons

Bulldog Gin
French lavender, dragon eye, and lotus leaves are just a few of the more interesting botanicals that mark this London dry gin out from the rest. Give it a go in a Negroni.
Campari Australia