MEET THE GIN-MAKERS
The rugged Northumberland moors.
Even if you know nothing about drinks, you’ll have noticed that gin is having a bit of a moment. There’s an ever-increasing number of bottles turning up on shop shelves, while classic and new gin cocktails – especially the negroni – are on the drinks menu in every bar.
SPIRIT OF THE WILD, Gin lover Valentine.
Gin’s fans are legion (and growing) and chef, food writer and outdoorsman Valentine Warner counts himself among them. “Gin is my absolute favourite spirit,” he declares. He likes it so much, in fact, that he’s gone and launched his own – Hepple. It’s named after the Hepple estate in Northumberland, owned by childhood friend Walter Riddell. I’m joining the pair on a chilly hike through the estate’s hills and bogs to see where the gin comes from, and to find out how the spirit is made.
Bog myrtle adds eucalyptus and bay scents.
The rugged moorland of North East England is perfect for growing juniper, the essential ingredient in gin (the drink’s name goes back to the French word for juniper – genièvre). We stop to inspect a young juniper bush; the green (unripe) berries release a fresh, piney blast when I bite into them – but Walter explains that not all is well with juniper in Britain. “A fungus that attacks the roots has been wiping out plants all over the country. No one knows how it’s spread,” he explains. Extra juniper seedlings have been planted on the estate to help overcome the threat of disease.
Baden, the Hepple still.
It took two years of planning before they started making Hepple, but what started as a vague idea soon grew into reality. “I had a chat with Walter about making a gin,” says Valentine, “and it resulted in a distillery.” We head to that tiny distillery, where we catch up with two more co-creators, Nick Strangeway and master distiller Chris Garden.
Juniper berries in the wild.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BOTANICALS
Like all gins, Hepple starts life as a flavourless white spirit, which is distilled with botanicals for flavour. A botanical is the fancy name for any product obtained from a plant – leaves, seeds or roots – that’s put to use in the distillation process, and it’s these that give gin its characteristic aroma and flavour. Each brand has its own unique blend of botanicals, but mature juniper berries are a constant.
GIN LABORATORY Hepple gin’s development building;
“We use 13 botanicals, but the way we process them is different from any other producer,” says Chris. “We’re the only distillery with a supercritical fluid extractor.” This piece of techno-geekery freezes and pressurises carbon dioxide until it turns into a liquid, which is then used to extract what Nick describes as ‘turbo-juniper’ from the ripe berries.
who’s on for a bit of practical chemistry?
That green juniper I tasted is another botanical. “It’s used a lot in Scandinavian food, but no one else uses it in gin,” says Nick. It, along with mature juniper berries, bog myrtle and lovage grown at Hepple, are some of the others. When he was working on the early stages of product development, Nick was “stuck in a summer house in Denmark” with a small still, working on the botanicals there. Noma restaurant was his nearest source of organic lovage, but the boys now grow it themselves on the estate.