It began where all good ideas do – over a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit at the end of a hard day in the office. Whilst we all love our day jobs which span across the public sector, we started to think what else we could do. It had to be something we would all be excited about. An opportunity to be creative, to give something back to the local area and a chance to meet new and interesting people.
After a very fleeting mention of becoming goat farmers, we had our eureka moment – gin!
The next day we started our research and immersed ourselves in every opportunity to learn about distilling and the magical botanicals that make each gin unique. We had lots to learn so we looked for people we could learn from – from master distillers producing beautiful gins already, to experienced foragers and farmers. Both the Mann and the Burrows-North households had extensive gin cupboards, so we set about a series of tasting evenings. With each bottle carefully wrapped in newspaper we tasted every single bottle in our cupboards, developing our taste buds and building a picture of what we loved and hoped for in our gin.
That was 2018 and two years later we were delighted to launch our signature gin – Tide’s Fortune.
That was only the beginning. We are super excited to see where our fortune takes us next. Over the coming year we will be adding a small number of limited edition gins and other spirits to our range. Keep in touch to find out more.
Our Gin is distilled in small batches using our still – Monty – the beating heart of the distillery. Monty is a modular still and arrived for us to build to our own design – much like a giant Meccano set! A series of copper bubble plates create cycles of reflux in the column. From here the vapour travels up and passes through the botanicals held in wire baskets where they are able to impart their natural oils. Finally the vapour condenses and collects to give a long and lingering, yet smooth mouthful with each sip.
Along with our big boy, Monty, we use two storage tanks – Withnail and Marwood (can you tell what our favourite film is?!) – these allow us to distill in small batches and to develop new recipes. We take our time and do everything by hand, from foraging and picking our local botanicals to filling, labelling and hand stamping each bottle so you can see which one of us got the final job of sealing the bottle with the beautiful neck label.
If you would like to work with us to develop a gin for you – maybe to mark a wedding day or a landmark event for you or your business – then please do get in touch.
We knew from the very start that we wanted to use some local botanicals, infusing our gin with the fortune of the east coast. But where to begin.
We are lucky that the hedgerows and shoreline around our distillery are rich with wonderful inspiration. For our signature gin – Tide’s Fortune – we knew we wanted to use the amazing Sea Buckthorn which grows wild on the sandy beaches nearby and is also farmed just a stones throw from the distillery. With this as our starting point we created our recipe. Here are some of the botanicals that we use:
