German gin honours our mining history
businessafterPeteraskedhim to help get gin made in his distillerytobarsandcustomersin the North East.
Peter’s Eicker and Callen Distillery dates back to 1749. Every gin is handcrafted and triple distilled to give it its unique flavour. The spirits are distilled using local botanical ingredientsgrowninalocalnature reserve.
Both Bryn’s hometown of Sunderland and Wanne-Eickel share a lot of similarities including a rich coal mining heritage and the two towns being a former heavy industry heartland.
Bryncomesfromafamilyof coalminerswhichishighlighted in two of his three current brands.Heexplained:“Wehave ‘Bergmann’ Gin which is the German word for miner and contains Goji Berry, Physalis and Yerba Leaf amongst its botanicals while ‘vogel’, the German word for bird, represents the yellow canaries that saved so many miners lives from coal gas and this has a more lemonflavoured base.”
The third gin, “Renton” is named after Bryn’s maternal, great, great grandfather CaptainJamesOgilvieRentonwho waslostatseain1871andwhose body was never found. A commemorativememorialstoneto Captain Renton can be seen in Sunderland Cemetery.
Bryn was recently contactedbyDavidRenton,acustomer in Ireland who wanted a bottle of Renton for his father’s 80th birthday. His dad was the third generation in his family to be called James Ogilvie Renton and bizarrely Bryn discovered thathehadanewfourthcousin.
“It’s sometimes called ‘mothers ruin’ but in this case it’s more like 'families united’,” said Bryn.
Each of the three gins distributedbytheHouseofRuhris limitedinnumbertojust2,500 and is individually numbered andhandsignedbytheGerman distillers before they hand fix the labels to the bottles.
Theyareavailableatanumberofretailoutletsthroughout theregionandalsoattheHouse of Ruhr website.