We support artisan distilleries from across the UK and we thought a blog would be a great place for our customers to learn more about these distilleries as each one has a story to tell. Our very first ‘Distillery Spotlight’ features Black Powder Gin, a distillery local to us. Read their story and see the wonderful offer we are running throughout November in collaboration with Black Powder….a special treat just for you, our customers.
Black Powder Gin
Situated in the picturesque countryside and overlooking the coastal peninsula of Western Lancashire resides one of the most unique and diverse distilleries in the region. Black Powder offers an extensive range of exciting products, all meticulously handmade in traditional copper pot stills.
Along with gins judged to be some of the finest in the world, they also produce exquisite liqueurs and rums, and over 20 delicious and entirely natural fruit gins to tantalise your taste-buds. Their meticulous distillation methods and long infusion process ensures all their creations are literally bursting with genuine spirit – absolutely no artificial flavours, colourings or preservatives are used, just amazing quality ingredients grown on their extensive orchards or sourced direct from the very best producers from all over the world!
What made you decide to create your gin and distillery?
Gin has always been a favourite spirit and one that most people have dabbled with to produce their own sloe or damson variety. Given the abundance of naturally growing fruit and ingredients around the farm it was an obvious and inevitable precursor to experimenting with other fruit-led gins. One experiment led to another, then another and before we knew it we had developed quite an extraordinary range focussed initially on fruit combinations using both a part distilled and part cold-compounded approach. This quickly led to developing solely distilled spirits which is where I (as the sole distiller) truly began to appreciate the craft element, honing my skills literally on the job
Can you tell us more about the distillery?
We’re situated on a family farm not far from the coastal towns of Lytham St Anne’s and the hedonistic bright lights of Blackpool. The farm has been in the family for over a century and has an incredible history linking to Cromwell, Thomas Miller and Charles Dickens. With 300 acres we have a number of them dedicated to orchards specifically for growing fruit for our spirits. In fact in the last few years we have planted 100,000 bushes and trees with another 45,000 in the next 2 years – mainly native for wildlife but 20% for growing fruit such as wild brambles, apples, quince, damson, sloe, black plum, Victoria plum, greengage, whitecurrant, redcurrant, blackcurrants, gooseberry, raspberry, hawthorne, rosehips, elderflower…..The original distillery started off in a small cow shed which is now our bar and tasting room. 4 years later and we are now in a large purpose built warehouse and distillery which majestically overlooks the lake adjacent – it’s a pretty stunning place to live and work with lots of natural wildlife pottering about!
Can you tell us more about your stills and distillation process?
Before our expansion we originally started with very traditional flame-fired alembic stills before going all out on a more contemporary version. Personally, I love gins that have a complex, exciting and lingering flavour profile – ones you can quaff and feel every part of your mouth and tongue being coated and taken somewhere compelling and immersive. To capture a profile like this requires a lot of beefing up on the ratio of ingredients and knowing just how well the spectrum of flavours combine and how they work within the ensemble. Our London Dry for example contains 28 botanicals so you can imagine the difficulty in making sure everything works and compliments each other harmoniously.
What’s your favourite way to drink your gins?
The true test of a good spirit is to taste it neat – let the natural oils sit on the tongue and do their job. After that see if it’s up to the mustard by testing how well those flavours expand or dissipate under dilution. Why meddle with a good spirit by throwing flavoured tonic at it unless it’s a bad spirit that is. Keep it simple – a premium Indian Tonic, lots of ice and a garnish that doesn’t look too much like it’s come out of Del Boy’s cocktail cabinet!
Our offer to you….
