Features & Culture Writer
Speciality: Spirits History, Travel, Distillery Profiles, Culture & Heritage
Walter writes long-form features that explore the stories behind spirits — the people, places, and ingredients that give each bottle its character. A former travel journalist, he has visited over two hundred distilleries across thirty countries spanning gin, rum, whiskey, vodka, and beyond. He contributes features and culture pieces across Gin.Directory, Rum.Directory, Whiskeyful.com, and TheVodka.Shop. His writing has appeared in Condé Nast Traveller, Monocle, and The World of Fine Wine.
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Wine has terroir, whisky has provenance — but does the soil beneath a distillery truly shape the spirit in your glass? A...
Walter Graves
April 2, 2026
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In a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam, the world's oldest distillery brand keeps the flame of genever alive — and remin...
Walter Graves
March 26, 2026
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A journey to the wild mountainsides of Macedonia and Albania, where juniper berries are hand-harvested for the world's f...
Walter Graves
March 19, 2026
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From estate-grown London Drys to Japanese sake-based spirits and oak-aged sippers, our editor-in-chief picks the 12 gins...
Walter Graves
March 18, 2026
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One is a legal classification that spans the globe; the other is tethered to a single distillery in Devon. The differenc...
Walter Graves
February 20, 2026
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One emerged from a Scottish coastal town with roses and cucumber; the other from the Black Forest with forty-seven wild ...
Walter Graves
February 10, 2026
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Two distillers, two philosophies, one shared obsession with juniper. The rivalry between Tanqueray and Beefeater has sha...
Walter Graves
January 25, 2026
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In Kyoto, a former sake brewery is making gin with yuzu and hinoki wood. In Kagoshima, shochu distillers are redistillin...
Walter Graves
January 18, 2026
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In 2009, there were six gin distilleries in London. Today there are over eight hundred across the UK. This is the story ...
Walter Graves
January 5, 2026
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At 57% ABV, Navy Strength gin was born from a practical necessity: if a barrel leaked onto the gunpowder stores, the pow...
Walter Graves
December 28, 2025
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For two centuries, Old Tom was Britain's favourite gin. Then it vanished. Now, thanks to cocktail revivalists and curiou...
Walter Graves
December 15, 2025
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Not every gin survives the Negroni. We poured twelve bottles against Campari and sweet vermouth to find which gins hold ...
Walter Graves
December 8, 2025
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Lemon myrtle, Tasmanian pepperberry, finger lime — Australian gin makers are reaching into a continent of unique native ...
Walter Graves
November 28, 2025
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Long before London Dry, there was genever — a malty, complex spirit born in the Low Countries that gave gin its name, it...
Walter Graves
November 10, 2025
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Pink gin, rhubarb gin, parma violet gin — flavoured gins have divided the gin world like nothing since the Gin Craze its...
Walter Graves
October 25, 2025
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Pot distilled, column distilled, vapour infused, vacuum distilled, compound — every method produces a different gin. Und...
Walter Graves
October 10, 2025