We’ve reviewed a number of gins over the past year — and we’ve tasted a great many more — with each one boasting its own distinctive flavour. From a touch of whisky to Japanese sansho berries, grains of paradise to hints of English wine. But every single one has something in common…a thread that links every gin that’s ever been made and, we very much hope, all to come for ever after. That one mandatory taste is of course juniper. And it’s to the berry that forms the soul of gin that we turn this month, with something rather special from the remote moors of Northumberland.
Hepple Gin uses fresh green juniper from one of the last wild sanctuaries in England. Producers The Moorland Spirit Co are proud of their triple technique which starts with a traditional one shot distillation in a copper pot, creating the basis for their gin. To this is added a further distillate of the green juniper berries, handpicked and then vacuum distilled to extract their vibrancy and freshness. The third part of this holy trinity is the high pressure distillation of the juniper essence – with the three processes combining to create a spirit that they boldly describe as ‘high fidelity’.
The roll call of botanicals is almost as lengthy as the production process itself, with the star of green juniper augmented by more ‘traditional’ juniper (Two varieties: Macedonian and Italian. These guys don’t do anything by halves!), then accompanied by some unexpected friends in Douglas fir, blackcurrant leaf, blackcurrant fruit and Amalfi lemon. These are underpinned by the more familiar additions of lovage, coriander seed, fennel seed, liquorice, orris root and angelica.
There’s no questioning the love and craft that goes into each bottle of Hepple Gin, but what does all that add up to in the glass? First, the nose. We get a hit of juniper and the Douglas fir comes through, along with earthy undertones that invite further exploration. But it’s on the palate that the true reward of all that hard work really delivers: more juniper, earth, freshness, herbaceous, even citrus. We’re almost lost for words at the depth they’ve achieved, in a good way. In terms of matching our botanicals – try them all, we did. You won’t be disappointed. As for Hepple Gin, all we can say is when we mentioned the soul of gin at the start of this blog we might have been being a bit poetic, but if gin does indeed have a soul then this is it. Buy some.
Explore the wild spirit at www.moorlandspirit.co
