Single estate gin
Sustainable farming and local sourcing are at the heart of this very English field-to-bottle gin
It’s Friday night and you’ve mixed yourself a stiff G&T. How much do you know about what’s in your glass, how it was made and where it originated? A new wave of distillers are keen to educate spirit-drinkers so they consider provenance – much in the same way we think about a wine’s terroir – and sustainability when choosing what to pour. Many companies buy in their neutral grain spirit (base of the drink) then redistill it to keep costs down. But with single estate spirits, most of the ingredients come from one specific plot of land, and the entire production process happens on-site. In Wiltshire, Ramsbury Estates’s manager Alistair Ewing and his team oversee the production of its London Dry gin from field right through to bottle. Horatio wheat, which gives the spirit its smooth, delicate sweetness, is grown in the farm’s rich chalk soil and harvested in late summer before it’s milled and fermented. The Salisbury plainsourced juniper and Serbian Gold quince grown on the farm add local flavours alongside botanicals such as coriander, cinnamon, dried lemon and orange peels, liquorice, oris root and angelica. Diluted with chalk-filtered water from a borehole on the estate and distilled through a 43-plate copper column still, the gin is even bottled on-site – you’ll find the batch number and distillation date recorded on the label.
Zero wastage is key. The copper still is powered by a biomass boiler that’s heated by wood from trees grown on the estate, leftover wheat from the distillation process is fed to the pigs and cows on the farm, and waste water is purified naturally through reed filtration beds. With such care taken to protect the environment, it’s no surprise that wildlife remains blissfully undisturbed – deer, red kites and buzzards are common sights.
As well as wheat to make gin and vodka, the 19,000-acre estate also grows barley for beer. Craft lager, milk stout, bitter and its distinctive mango IPA are all brewed here, and other goodies such as cold-pressed extra virgin rapeseed oil and local honey are made on-site as well.
The estate’s pub, The Bell at Ramsbury, showcases the farm’s best produce on its menu, including meat from the Oxford Sandy and Black pigs reared there. The pub’s gin-cured salmon is a good partner to a martini, too. This is truly grain-to-glass at its best.