Vibe: This is a small country house done to the nines with perfect service, amazing food and a fire going in the drawing room. The host is beyond charming. While the antiques are extraordinary and the rooms quaint and comfortable, people come here to eat.

Rooms: With just six rooms, you get to know everyone fairly quickly. Rooms are filled with antiques that have been handed down for six generations, surrounded by original features comforted up with modern beds, Egyptian cotton, luxurious bathrooms with marble floors and Wi-Fi. You feel as if you’ve wandered into a Jane Austen novel, just waiting for someone to call you down to supper.

F&B: The kitchen at Newforge House conjures sweet and savoury delights using local ingredients, including fruit from their orchard and vegetables from the garden. All the meat is raised a stone’s throw away and a dozen or so hens come through each morning with fresh eggs. The dining room draws the weekend-away crowd from all over Ireland. We sit down to a feast of roast lamb, fresh fish and incredible cheese, then linger over after-dinner whiskeys by the fire. “Growing our own or using local produce means that we use not only foods in season, when they are at their best, but also varieties that best suit our weather conditions and soil,” explains Louise. Dinner is at 8.

THINGS TO DO: IN NORTHERN IRELAND
HOW-TO: DRIVE ON THE LEFT

Extras: The preserves and chutneys are absolutely insane, as is the gin list, which includes gins from around the world plus house-infused gins and vodkas with flavours of raspberries, blackberries, sloes and damsons (a relative of the plum).

Off-Site: Edenmore Golf & Country Club is a five-minute drive away. Ten minutes away, Lurgan Park is the second biggest park in Ireland and its Brownlow House has 365 rooms. Hillsborough Castle & Gardens, where the Royal Family stays when they come to Northern Ireland, is 15 minutes away. Hilden Brewery is the oldest independent brewery in Ireland, just 20 minutes away.

Rate: $$$

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My interest in gin began years ago, when I mixed drinks at my parents’ card parties in the 1970s: gin fizzes, gimlets and rickeys. A martini for me is always gin-based unless otherwise specified—I’m that committed. Being invited to the opening of the new home of Bombay Sapphire at Laverstoke Mill south of London a few years ago was like a reward, a pilgrimage—one I still talk about, especially when I’m trying to impress other gin aficionados. (This always works.)

But England doesn’t have the market cornered when it comes to gin any more as things turn out, particularly small-batch gin: A trip to Ireland proved very much otherwise.

This truth comes out in Belfast, while spending a full Saturday afternoon with Taste & Tour, a food and drink touring company that takes you “off the eaten track” to experience the top food and drink establishments in the city centre with a couple of different walking tours, including a Whiskey Walk and a Gin Jaunt. Basically, they walk people around town getting them drunk. A simple but fun business model—and they do well by it: The Jaunts sell out weeks in advance. I soon see why.

“There’s a real fascination with gin at the moment,” says Taste & Tour founding director Phil Ervine. “Gin is a fascinating spirit category, as no two gins are the same. There are so many different styles to explore, from London Dry and Old Tom to New Western and Plymouth Gin.”

THINGS TO DO: IN NORTHERN IRELAND
TASTE TO TRY: SHORTCROSS GIN

Hello, Doug? It’s me, gin. The tour takes us to five different locations where we taste very generous pours of seven different gins in three hours, starting off in one of Belfast’s oldest pubs: the Victorian gin palace that is the Crown Liquor Saloon. We learn first about the pub (built in 1826 and restored to the tune of half-a-million pounds) and then embark on the gins, softening the first one with a Fever-Tree tonic, which I immediately dislike. The second tasting, a wet martini at Rita’s nightclub around the corner, provokes a few grimaces at the cocktail’s potency but our group’s general volume increases. I’m shocked how many people admit to never having tried a martini before, but I guess that’s the whole point.

At the third stop, I have to wave away the tonic and win kudos from Phil for just drinking the local Jawbox Gin on the rocks. It’s delicious, with fresh citrus notes balancing flavours of juniper and pine. The founder of this Belfast distillery, Gerry White, is on hand to provide a bit of context, including background on the name, which is taken from the old Belfast communal sinks in the poorer parts of town, around which neighbourhood gossip was readily shared.

Farther along our tour, Boatyard Double Gin from Enniskillen in the southwest corner of Northern Ireland lights up everyone’s eyes—mind you, we’re five in, so the lights were kinda already on and we are all really, really good friends by now. Boatyard has an even more pronounced juniper taste with a floral tinge. One of the organic botanicals is sweet gale, a type of wild myrtle that grows on the distillery property.

The last magnificent example comes in a shelf-worthy blue-glass bottle. Distilled in Drumshanbo in the Republic of Ireland, Gunpowder Irish Gin has a citrusy, tea-like taste, with one of the more noticeable botanicals being something called gunpowder tea, a type of Chinese tea that is rolled into a tiny pellet. And yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus—Gunpowder has made its way to the LCBO.

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