Review: Etsu Double Yuzu Gin

Etsu Double Yuzu Gin is widely available in Australia.

Etsu Double Yuzu Gin is a Japanese gin. It’s produced on Hokkaido Island and plays as a fresh, zesty gin, as you’d expect of a gin made to emphasis a variety of citrus (yuzu). This gin is widely available in the liquor supermarkets of Australia.

Review of Etsu Double Yuzu Gin:

It’s a fragrant gin, a bit tart, a bit sweet-sour even, with a coriander-like bitterness to the finish. I drank through a bottle three ways; with soda, with tonic (2 x types), and in a couple of (slightly) different iterations of negroni. Always on ice and mostly without garnish, save for orange peel with the negronis.

The first couple of times I drank Etsu Double Yuzu Gin it was in a negroni, and I didn’t think much of it. There was nothing off-putting but I had it, in my mind, on the '“don’t purchase again” list, simply because it felt a bit bland. I was asking too much of it; it was getting lost in a negroni. I know this now because it came alive with tonic. I didn’t love it with soda so I finished the bottle off in G&T mode only, and was more than happy with it in that form: lots of herbs, lots of citrus, blossomy, fresh, energetic, all good G&T things.

Yuzu itself would arguably be the best garnish but, more practically, I’d imagine that a slice of lemon would be tops, if garnish is your thing.

Bottle was purchased with my own hard-earned.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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