MENU dorset issue 25 MENU25.dorset pdf issue 25.final | Seite 21

 P
L E N T Y 
Meet Your Maker
Lilliput Gin
With botanicals including olives, rosemary, basil and thyme,
Lilliput Gin brings the taste of the Mediterranean to Dorset
M
any of Dorset’s producers
share a similar story. One
that goes from packing in the
day job in the City of London to follow a
dream of setting up an artisan food or drink
business. Well, Lilliput Gin’s founder Andy
Woodfield is doing something he’s always
wanted to achieve and he’s still doing the
day job – he’s a partner at Price Waterhouse
Coopers, but at the weekend, he’s all about
creating award-winning Mediterranean-
style gin, using botanicals that take him
from his garden in Poole to the foothills of
Sarajevo. “When you hold a bottle that you
designed and the drink inside is something
you created and people want to buy it, it’s
a great feeling,” he enthuses. “It’s therapy
from the corporate world.”
No Gin, no Fee
Andy prepares
infusions at 8am on
a Friday morning.
They’re ready by
8.30am and Andy
can get on with his
day job from home.
Was it your dream to make a gin?
Not really, but creating a brand that people
love that is recognised for its quality is
something that I’ve always been passionate
about it. It started as an experiment in
January last year – was it possible to create a
brand and launch a gin that tastes amazing?
I do like gin though [laughs]! I’ve drunk
a lot of it! My actual dream was that I
always wanted a bar in my house and it was
almost the bar that drove the gin. I started
collecting gins, and I found that it was quite
interesting, seeing all the different places it’s
made in and what they put in it.
There are many gins on the market,
even a number from Dorset, so what
makes yours different?
When we started I decided not to look or
taste like the other Dorset gins, because
I didn’t want them to feel like we were
treading on their toes. I decided to pick the
gin that I liked the most – Gin Mare, which
is more of a Mediterranean gin. I thought:
why don’t I see if I can do my own twist on
it?
Then I started to look at the local ones – I
love Conker, Pothecary are really
Ginspirational
And y in his
dist iller y. Go to
www.lilliput- gin.
com to buy a
interesting, Fordington is fantastic… there
bott le of his gin
are some amazing gin producers in Dorset,
or a virt ual real ity
but I just don’t see them as competitors
gin tast ing
because we’re not trying to beat anyone. We
experience!
buy their products, we drink them and we
talk about them in a positive way because
we love what they do. People who love
our gin really love Conker, they really like
Pothecary. I think there’s room for everyone
if you’ve got a distinctive, quality product.
Your wild juniper is foraged in Bosnia.
How did you find that?
I look after PWC’s relationships with the
Foreign Office and I have a team working
with the British government to help bring
stability to a lot of the governments around
central and eastern Europe. They were in
Sarajevo and after conversations with the
embassy there, they were saying you must
use the local juniper. They connected me
with a lovely old lady there – her little group
forage juniper from the foothills of Sarajevo.
It’s one of those little micro businesses that
we’re always really keen as a firm to support
as part of our international development
work, so it was really nice to support her
and the British Embassy there. We got the
juniper back and it’s amazing.
With a lot of juniper you always have to
crush it to get the smell out. With this, you
can hold it in your hand at arm’s length and
you can smell the juniper – it’s so fresh. We
have teams going back and forwards on
those projects all the time and they bring
4kg bags back.
Your rosemary, though, is closer to
home…
We’ve got a terraced garden in Poole
and we’ve got a 300 year-old olive tree
surrounded by rosemary that goes all the
way down to the front of the road, which
we planted when we first moved in about
four years ago. That’s been a good source of
rosemary all year round. We get our olives
from a place called Oliveology in Borough
www.menu-dorset.co.uk
21
Lilliput’s latest
product, a cask
edition gin.