By Francis Gimblett
Gin Crazy
‘T
his is where Prince John
is said to have drowned a
woodcutter’s daughter, after
she’d rejected his advances,’
said Ian McCulloch, Director
of Silent Pool gin, as we
stood beside a translucent
blue lake behind the distillery.
‘And when Agatha Christie
went missing for a few days in
1926, it was thought she too
had drowned here.’ As the
lake was the water source for
the distillery’s gin, I tried to
set aside images of bobbing,
face-down female corpses,
and instead concentrated on
the glass of gin Ian had
poured for me. I took a sniff.
My mind was filled with a
kaleidoscope of aromatics: thick,
resinous juniper; sweet citrus;
honey and lavender; as well as
others I couldn’t place; a
sensuous, pungent cloud rising
from the glass, so different from
what I’d come to expect from gin
until only a few years ago.
Before 2007, for tax reasons,
you could not gain a distiller’s
licence unless you could produce
punitively large minimum
volumes. The law was altered to
allow small distillers to buy in
base spirit and r