Ex-gold miner finds a new treasure Distiller’s top quality spirits are made with locally sourced ingredients
AMAN who knows exactly how to strike gold has done just that with his latest venture.
In his early years, Philip Robbins spent time working in a gold mine in Africa.
A man with an adventurous spirit, he travelled to South Africa aged 16 for a three-week holiday and liked it so much he stayed for nine years. The first five of those were spent working down a gold mine.
Now back home in Lancashire, he has struck gold of a different kind.
He has now launched Forgan Distillery, making top quality gin, whiskey and dark rum using ingredients grown in the local area.
The firm, based in the coastal village of Banks, near Southport, provides specially crafted products for those who enjoy what they savour.
Philip gave up his career in electro mechanical engineering and IT to pursue his passion.
Learning about his craft and earning his rare Distiller’s Licence took Philip a year while his bottles take several weeks to make.
They include: Refreshingly Modern Forgan 42 gin (42%) – a silver medal winner at the London Spirit Award; Forgan PINK Hibiscus Rose & Apple Gin (42%); Forgan Heather & Vanilla Gin (42%); Forgan Corn Whiskey Single Grain, Single Cask (48%); Forgan Dark Rum (46%); Forgan 74 gin (74%); and Forgan 80 gin (80%).
The Forgan traditional English dark rum takes eight weeks to ferment.
The Forgan Corn Whiskey has its roots back in the 1990s, when Philip spent some time in the USA – although some of its taste is much closer to home.
Philip said: “I use local produce for my corn whiskey. The corn for it grows on the other side of my fence in Banks!
“I am not allowed to call it bourbon, because it is not made in the US, but it is made to a traditional USA Southern States bourbon recipe and has a very similar taste.”
Back in the 1980s Philip spent a number of years in South Africa, where he worked as a gold miner.
He said: “In October 1980 I went to South Africa for a three week holiday to visit family.
“I’d been there about an hour when I decided it would be a good idea to stay. The sun was out, it was warm, I was 16, had no ties in England, what else was I going to do?
“After spending time with family and sorting out a work permit it was time to get a job.
“I’d had an idea I wanted to be a lawyer or an accountant, but that meant going back to school, college and university and what I really needed was an income because funds were getting low.
“It was put to me that I might want to think about getting a trade ‘because if you have a trade you can always fall back on that no matter what’.
“It seemed like a good idea so I applied for a job on President Brand Gold mine, part of the Anglo American group in a city called Welkom in the South Africa Gold Fields. I was taken on as an apprentice electrician in February 1981.
“When you mention gold mines people still think of picks, shovels, dynamite and nuggets. In the mines I worked on there are no nuggets and the scale is huge.
“I worked anywhere between 7,200 and 10,500 feet below surface, that’s vertically down – if it seems like a long way it is!
“We put down thousands and thousands of workers per shift. The lift or ‘cage’ at #2 shaft held 180 people. As one was going up one was going down.
“When I was working at 105 level I went down to 46 (46,000 feet) level first, walked in about a mile, got in another cage, went down to 72 level, got out, walked another mile got into another cage, went down further – I can’t remember the level, walked in a bit further, got in a carriage on an incline shaft and got down to 105 (105,000 feet) level, walked in and got to my workshop and started work.
“It was hot, and dusty, and didn’t smell great. The side wall temperature could be as high as 50˚C. Cold air was pumped down the shaft and up a vent shaft, cold water was pumped through pipes to keep the air ‘cool’ but generally working conditions weren’t great.
“But what about the gold? Oh yes, the gold was there. There was a lot of gold, tons of the stuff, many many tons of it. It was in the ‘reef ’, an uninteresting greenish-grey rock that had to be drilled, blasted, taken to surface, processed, extracted, smelted and poured.
“Seems easy enough? Except that to get one ounce of gold they had to extract and process up to 90 tons of rock.
“These were the richest and most profitable deep mines in the world back in the day, they poured tons of gold a month.
“Welkom is built around three seismic fault lines, so there were plenty of earth tremors. Being thousands of feet underground took it to a whole new level. When it shook down there it really shook!
“Most of my time was spent underground. Not all of it was unpleasant. It could be fun, and it was an adventure.
“When I wasn’t underground I was at college and university studying to get an engineering degree. I was given time off to study and part of it was paid for by the mine.
“I worked on other parts of the mine, the waste washing plant where they washed waste, the acid plant where they manufactured acid for part of the gold extraction process, the uranium plant where they extracted uranium from seams of ore they mined through, and I worked at the gold plant for a while where the magic happened.
“Huge conveyors trundled rocks in, they went through crushers and got reduced down to smaller and smaller bits, that then went through several processes using acid, and other pretty nasty stuff before ending up in the gold house where what was left was smelted and poured.
“We poured a couple of tons a month into 33kg bars. It was about 97% pure and wasn’t really that interesting to look at.
“When you work alongside it every