I’ve long been a fan of The Gower Gin Company – having reviewed their original Gŵyr & Pinwydd Gins in 2018 and placed their Bara Brith Gin in my Top Ten of 2019 – so I was excited and delighted in equal measure when I heard they were releasing a Navy Strength Gin.
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Provenance is undoubtedly popular these days – after all who doesn’t like the feelgood factor of buying something local? – but, like anything that matters, it’s not easy to get right. There’s confusion about names (my friend up north is forever confusing Slingsby and Harrogate gins); there’s the all-important matter of honesty and authenticity (it recently transpired Snowdonia Gin is actually made over the border in Warrington); and then, to really mean something, provenance needs to go beyond the name to the product itself. It’s not just what the gin is called and where it’s made that matters, but also what it’s made of and why. Provenance is about stories and people, botanicals and landscapes. And to do provenance properly it all needs to connect with that community.
2017 was one hell of a year for gin with figures released today showing Britons bought 51 million bottles of our favourite spirit; an increase of 27% on 2016 figures! Sweeter spirits are proving increasingly popular, with fruit gins dominating sales in 2017 and growth only expected to continue well into 2018. Capitalising on this lucrative market, Aber Falls, North Wales’ first whisky distillery in over 100 years, has launched a range of gin and liqueurs while it waits on its whisky to mature.
In 2010, John Savage-Onstwedder became one of the first UK recipients of a 350-litre still license, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the Dà Mhìle organic farmhouse distillery was opened in Ceredigion, Mid Wales. Having endured months, if not years, of building works and bureaucracy, success came to the distillery quickly as their first product, the organic Orange 33 liqueur, won a True Taste Award for its very first test batch!
It is fairly common for a new distillery to start making gin before moving onto whisky. Gin, which can be sold as soon as it is made, offers a relatively quick financial return in comparison with whisky which (due to legal requirement) must be aged before it is commercially viable. This helps to explain why approximately 70% of the gin produced in the UK is made in Scotland. What is much less common is for a gin to have its origins in whisky production, but this is the case in the story of Welsh distillery Dà Mhìle.
Gin A Ding Ding 