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Due in part to this dichotomy, Cornish folk and business work fiercely to both promote and defend their own. For a place that isn’t even a country, Cornwall harbours an incredible amount of national pride. And this sentiment is also ringing true for one of the county’s newest sectors: distilling. Bog Myrtle is also known as “Sweet Gale” and is a short shrub common in nitrogen poor bogs in North America and Europe. Bog Myrtle was a common component of beer flavoring in Europe prior to the availability of hops. In the gin I have tried to capture the Cornish spring in a bottle. Not only by using fresh and local ingredients but also by using those flavours that remind me of my childhood. That excitement of Spring, when the mornings are crisp and fresh and the winter is fading. New flavours are coming into season, new smells fill the garden. Caspyn Gin (both the Cornish Dry and the Midsummer) comes in the familiar “Oslo” bottle with a prescriptive paper label on the front, this dictating the batch number, date of distillation, ABV and a little detail about distillation. On the side of the label there’s a basking shark – a creature which seems to serve as something of an emblem for Cornish gins, as the snappy creatures show up on both of Tarquin’s bottle as well. These botanicals are in addition to a traditional gin bouquet, which oddly is what comes out when Caorunn gin is tasted.
Today the Eagle One Gin range – which includes the juicy Bright Summer Gin and the warming, spicy Bold Winter Gin – is distilled on a bespoke 230-litre still named Bob, after Robert, Count of Mortain, who built Launceston Castle. All of the botanicals are added to an organic grain spirit and left to macerate overnight. The still is switched on first thing in the morning and runs for six hours, producing a grand total of 250 bottles worth of liquid. Once off the still, the gin is cut to 40% with Cornish water and left to rest for a couple of days before bottling. Caspyn Gin to taste…Rowan Berry is a common wild tree in the UK. Often as small trees with bright orange-reddish berries.
As is common knowledge now, the very British G&T has its origins in the tropical British colonies as gin was used to mask the bitter flavour of quinine which was the only effective anti-malarial around at the time. Quinine was dissolved in carbonated water to form tonic water and voila, the gin and tonic was born. The South West was once a profitable mining region, producing tin, copper and arsenic for trade around Britain, but this industry all but dried up in the 20th The trio are also looking at making their own rum using imported molasses. It looks set to be the first English-made organic rum, and will set the path for the distillery’s gins to be made fully organic as well. (They won’t be the first Cornish gin makers to make this transition – Southwestern Distillery launched its Twin Fin rum in 2020, made with imported Caribbean spirit.) With tonic that peel/spice combination is accentuated; it’s a spiced G&T, with a layer of green so dark it’s as though you’re lost in a forest at night. It’s a bold interpretation of a summer gin, with cucumber dominating so much of the taste that the flower infusion barely gets to make a mark. It’s less singular than the lemon verbena-led Caspyn Gin, but despite that new found complexity we’d still opt for the original. Cornish Summer Cup to taste…Flavoured gin is an exciting evolution of the original gin formula, with an array of options as plentiful as your own imagination. Fruity flavours like raspberry, lemon, citrus and mango are perhaps the most popular, but more creative concoctions with notes of vanilla, chocolate, peppercorn or ginger are also available. While Gillatt, Hillier and Warfield are building a home for their brand, Alex Palmer-Samborne, founder and distiller at Skylark Distillery, literally set up shop in his house: a converted barn near Lostwithiel, where he lives with partner Christina and dog Bentley.
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