Gin Squares

FIRST JOURNEYS - 80 GINS AROUND THE WORLD - PIN 52 OF 80

TARSIER SOUTHEAST ASIAN GIN, Manchester, UK

AROUND THE WORLD, ONE BOTTLE AT A TIME,

PHILEAS FOGG WOULD SURELY APPROVE

I couldn't really do a Southeast Asian gin journey without including Tarsier. Although it is distilled in Manchester, everything about the brand takes me back to the flavours and experiences of Southeast Asia.

Tarsier was created by Tim Driver and Sherwin Acebuche after their travels around Southeast Asia in 2015. Their journey took them through the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, and it was the food as much as the scenery that stayed with them. They returned to Manchester wanting to recreate some of those flavours in a gin.

Sherwin's Filipino heritage is also an important part of the story. The gin is named after the Philippine tarsier, one of the world's smallest primates, which is found in the Philippines. During their travels they visited the tarsiers on Bohol and were fascinated by these tiny nocturnal creatures with their enormous eyes.

The first Tarsier experiments were made on a small scale in Manchester before the pair moved into a tiny room behind a pub. Their first stills were two 60-litre copper alembics, named Florencia and Graciano after Sherwin's Filipino grandparents.

As the business grew, they moved into their own distillery and invested in a 500-litre iStill, allowing them to produce on a much larger scale. They also use vacuum distillation for some ingredients, which allows delicate botanicals to be distilled at lower temperatures and helps preserve their fresher flavours.

The original Tarsier Southeast Asian Dry Gin was designed to be a liquid snapshot of their travels. Rather than picking one country's ingredients, they brought together flavours from across the region, including Kampot pepper, ginger and kaffir lime.

The current range has expanded considerably since I first came across Tarsier, and the food connection has become even more obvious.

The Calamansi Citrus Gin takes its inspiration from the Philippines, where calamansi is used everywhere from marinades and dipping sauces to drinks and desserts. It's a tiny citrus fruit, somewhere between lime and mandarin, with a sharp, aromatic flavour. I can imagine this working beautifully alongside Filipino dishes such as chicken adobo, where the acidity cuts through the richness of the soy and vinegar-based sauce.

Then there is Chilli & Lemongrass Gin, which for me immediately suggests the flavours of Thailand and Vietnam. Lemongrass, chilli and citrus are such a familiar combination in Southeast Asian cooking, and I could see this alongside Vietnamese lemongrass chicken, Thai grilled prawns or even a bowl of spicy noodle soup. It's the sort of gin that doesn't need much added to it because the flavour profile already has plenty going on.

And this is where I think Tarsier makes most sense.

If you think about Southeast Asian food, those ingredients immediately start making sense together. Ginger, lime and pepper are not there simply to make the gin sound exotic — they are flavours we actually associate with the region's cooking.

The Lychee & Raspberry Pink Gin is the sweeter member of the family, with lychee giving it a distinctly Asian fruit character. Lychee appears in drinks and desserts across Southeast Asia and works particularly well with chilli and spice, so I'd be tempted to pair this with something like Vietnamese-style fresh spring rolls with a sweet chilli dipping sauce, where the fruitiness of the gin would echo the sweet and spicy elements.

And then there's the Oolong Tea Old Tom Gin, which is perhaps the one that most intrigues me. Tea is deeply woven into the food and drinking culture of Asia, and oolong brings a gentle roasted, floral and slightly earthy character. I'd be thinking about Chinese or Taiwanese-inspired dishes, particularly roast duck, char siu or sticky pork, where the tea's subtle bitterness could cut through the richness.

I really like the way the range has developed because the flavours don't feel like they're being added simply for the sake of being different. They are ingredients that make sense when you think about the food of the region.

The branding has changed too. In 2025 Tarsier introduced a new bottle design, using black glass and textures inspired by bamboo, bark, ferns and jungle foliage. But there was a slight problem — the founders felt that the redesign had actually hidden the tarsier too much!

The latest branding puts the little creature firmly back in the spotlight, with bright colours and foil details inspired by Southeast Asia. Each expression has its own colourway, making the range much easier to identify.

The conservation story remains at the heart of the brand too. Tarsier has partnered with organisations working to protect these tiny primates and their habitat, and a proportion of the company's profits goes towards conservation.

I think Tarsier is a great example of how a gin can be made somewhere completely different from the place that inspired it. The distillery may be in Manchester, but the inspiration is firmly rooted in Southeast Asia — in the founders' travels, Sherwin's Filipino heritage, the ingredients, the food and, of course, that extraordinary little tarsier.

I don't like to mess with this one too much, so my favourite serve remains a simple G&T with ginger and lime. But looking at the current range, I think I'd be tempted to experiment with a few Southeast Asian food pairings too. That's probably the best way to understand what Tarsier is trying to do — taste the gin alongside the food that inspired it.