Salcombe Gin Tasting Experience

I am a bit of gin lover (you may know this from my instagram) and so, when my dad bought me a gin making course for my birthday it was safe to say I was a little excited. It took me a few months to pin down a date but last month I finally got around to booking it and it was so much fun I naturally wanted to talk about it on the blog.

The gin school was part of Salcombe Gin Disillery based in, you guessed it, Salcombe, Devon. We had booked onto the afternoon session which started 2pm and we had somehow been blessed with sunshine for the day, a rarity this March! We arrived to a beautiful open bar and were handed a G&T to enjoy the view from the balcony over the harbour whilst we waited for the rest of the class to arrive.

The experience started with a tour of the distillery. We had the gin making explained to us and got to see how the process works before we let loose to try it ourselves. We also got to have a mini history lesson about Salcombe gin as well which reminded me just how successful businesses can be in a short space of time if you have a clear idea of what you want.

After our history and science lesson we headed over to where we would create our own gin. The room was filled with mini stills around a central space where our guide explained what we would be doing. We were given a gigantic list of possible ingredients from floral to spicy and everything in between and were encouraged to include between 10-15 ingredients.

We wanted to create a raspberry style gin but raspberry obviously wasn't our only ingredient, we also used juniper, coriander, orris root, vanilla, elderflower, habanero chilli, elderberry, lime, coconut, cucumber, heather, cinnamon and angelica root. Safe to say there is far more that goes into the bottle than meet the eye!

After adding our ingredients to our mini still, we had to wait for it all to distill off. After we had filled up 400ml of alcohol we then added our pure water to reduce the alcohol percentage and our gin was complete.

The finished bottle looked beautiful in its wooden box and personalised label. We chose to call our gin Ebor 15 (referring to the the house I lived in when Louis and I first met and then the number of ingredients we had used). We had made enough to taste as well and so we headed over to the bar at the end of the class. The barman asked what ingredients we had used in our gin to ensure that he chose the correct garnish. As we headed out onto the balcony for some late afternoon sun, it really was the perfect end to a fantastic afternoon.

I couldn't have asked for a better birthday gift, it was truly fantastic and I couldn't recommend it more for a present as well!

Love
Erin