Another Hendrick’s Gin Is Lesley Gracie’s Newest Creation

• More than 25 years after launching the original Hendrick’s, master distiller Lesley Gracie has introduced Another Hendrick’s, the brand’s first permanent release in nine years.
• The gin keeps the established blend of 11 botanicals, enhanced with Guatemalan cacao and Egyptian orange blossom for a fuller, more floral interpretation of the recognisable Hendrick’s character.
• Presented in a white bottle rather than the original black one, Another Hendrick’s reflects the brand’s two-sided identity: it reworks the classic gin instead of moving away from it.

The Hendrick’s Gin legacy

William Grant & Sons launched Hendrick’s Gin in 1999, creating a brand that would help lead the gin revival of the 21st century. Developed by master distiller Lesley Gracie, Hendrick’s used an unconventional distillation approach, combining cucumber and essence of Bulgarian rose with a more customary botanical recipe. It disrupted the dominance of traditional London Dry gins and, in doing so, brought gin to an entirely new audience.

Hendrick’s is now among the world’s top-selling premium gins, while a generation of unconventional “New Western Dry” gins has followed in its path.

More than a quarter of a century on, Gracie has revisited the concept and produced the aptly titled Another Hendrick’s. It introduces orange blossom and cacao to the familiar profile of 11 botanicals.

As the first permanent addition to the range for nine years, it recasts the classic recipe - or perhaps represents an alternate-universe version of the Hendrick’s that might have existed from the beginning. “The creative challenge I set myself with Another Hendrick’s,” Gracie says, “was if I were to create Hendrick’s again today, what would I do?”

How Another Hendrick’s Gin was developed

A trip to a cocktail bar in Mexico City provided the spark for the new flavour combination. “I saw a drink with a cacao flower garnish,” Gracie remembers. That pairing of cacao and floral notes prompted her to consider, what if…. She selected Theobroma Lachuá cacao beans from Guatemala, while the orange blossom comes from Neroli oil, an essential oil from Egypt.

After Gracie and the Hendrick’s team agreed on those new components, “the work was figuring out how to rebalance the final liquid - to showcase that deep velvety character of cacao and the new orange blossom floral elements.” Producing Another Hendrick’s proved considerably easier than developing the original, as the established botanical formula required no changes to accommodate the additions.

“As the base canvas, Another Hendrick’s uses the exact same botanical blend as Hendrick’s Gin,” Gracie notes. It is also made using the same two stills at the Hendrick’s distillery in Girvan, Scotland: a Bennett pot still and an uncommon Carter-Head still. They each infuse the gin differently, drawing out individual flavours for the finished blend.

Fine-tuning the taste profile was the real challenge, according to Gracie. “I’ve never worked with cacao in gin before, and it’s quite tricky when working with a botanical for the first time. The bright, soft floral notes from orange blossom lift the cacao perfectly. There was a lot of playing around to get the balance just right. It was important [that] it still felt like Hendrick’s, but also was something totally different, if that makes sense. Getting the balance of it absolutely right was a process and took some time, but it was a lot of fun to develop.”

Fast Facts: Another Hendrick’s Gin

Gracie says gin gives her greater freedom to build particular flavour profiles than distillers and blenders working with other spirits enjoy. “The beauty about playing with gin,” she says, “is that there are so many different dimensions you can push the flavor, while keeping that important juniper underpinning. The possibilities are literally endless - there are so many different plants and botanicals to explore, it’s about figuring out how to combine them and how they work best together to create something really special.”

A white bottle for a new Hendrick’s dimension

Another Hendrick’s comes in a bold white bottle, deliberately contrasting with the original Hendrick’s black bottle. Nora Topley, Hendrick’s global brand managing director, says it received its name because it “plays on Hendrick’s characteristic wit and is really quite literal, as this is another side of Hendrick’s, one brand with two striking different sensory dimensions.”

The first permanent addition to the core Hendrick’s range since Orbium in 2017, Another Hendrick’s is now being launched across the U.S. and worldwide.