By juniper
conducts gin-making workshops on the last Saturday of every month. By the time you’re done, you’ll know your juniper from your genever; you’ll also get to take home a bottle of your very own custom-made gin, to share with friends while you expound to them the secrets of this special spirit.
It’s no wonder that with its gleaming pipes and measuring jars, New Harbour’s HQ resembles a laboratory: Janeke calls it “an experimental distillery”. Here the chemical engineering graduate puts to the test different ingredients and distillation methods — such as the steepand-boil method, where all the botanicals are “steeped” (like a teabag in tea) in neutral spirit, and the vapour infusion method, where the botanicals encounter the spirit only when it is in vapour form, allowing a much more delicate flavour profile to emerge.
We taste six different gins to give us an idea of how different each can be: from the classic Gordon’s Special London Dry, with heavy juniper giving it a clear, pinelike taste, to the silky sweet Hendrick’s. We also sample New Harbour’s subtly citrus Spekboom Gin (which has infused spekboom leaves grown hydroponically at the distillery along with five other botanicals) and the amber-coloured Rooibos Infused Gin, which reminds me of Cederberg river water with a touch of whisky.
We’re also introduced to the various botanicals — stored in glass jars — that Janeke uses: sniffing, squeezing and tasting coriander seeds, grains of paradise, liquorice and others. The most important botanical is juniper; without these