A Proud Shropshire Distillery
The fields of Shropshire are filled with crops, everything we need to make great spirits is right here. So, in 2017 I built a distillery into an old farm building near Ludlow. I tapped into a supply of locally grown barley, sought permission to forage the local hills and meadows and began making spirits from the natural abundance of this area.
My very first product was my Barley Vodka. Vodka is an exercise in purity and a stark test of the technical skill of a distiller. And because vodka is the base for gin, it’s also the starting point for making flavoured spirits, infusions and liqueurs. The malted barley gave my vodka a gentle sweetness as well as making an amazingly smooth and pure base for my gin. In 2020, my Barley Vodka was voted in the top five UK-made vodkas at the London Spirit Awards.
About six years ago, gin exploded in popularity.You probably noticed. Many opportunists jumped into the distilling industry using industrially produced ethanol which is called neutral grain spirit. It’s a pure alcohol made in huge factories, but if you water it down so it won’t turn off your liver like a light switch it can be called vodka. If you boil it with juniper and herbs, you can call it gin. Neutral grain spirit is my nemesis. Here’s why:
Almost all of the gin makers that popped up in those past five years are making their gin out of inexpensive industrial alcohol. If a shop sells one- hundred different gins, ninety-eight of them are likely to be infused industrial alcohol with a pretty label on it. As the gin craze fades, these gin producers are now buying casks of rum and whisky and bottling it under their own name. This baffles me. We live in an area covered with fields of grain and orchards of fruit, why would you import industrial alcohol and pretend it’s a local product?
In designing my Hillside Gin, I wanted authentic local flavours and not the typical London-style juniper bomb being replicated by hundreds of start-up gin makers.The NationalTrust and Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre gave me permission to forage local botanicals from their land. In 2019 my Hillside Gin was awarded Gold Medal for Best New Product at the Ludlow Food Festival.
Whisky has always been my passion. If vodka is a test of technical skill, whisky is the ultimate artistic expression of a distillery and a test of patience. I am making classic single malts, but also exploring other grains, incorporating worldwide methods and innovating with different woods for the casks. Last year I released my first whisky product, Single Barrel Rye, made from UK grown rye and locally grown barley, aged in a heavily charred new American oak cask. It’s already getting rave reviews and expectation is building for more whiskies to come.
Today my spirits are sold in farm shops, wine shops and retailers around Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire as well as many local pubs and restaurants. I have a booth at the Ludlow Local Producers Market on the fourth Thursday of each month, and of course they are available to order online from my website.
After five years on this journey, my spirits have won 10 major awards, but what’s my greatest source of pride? At my first Ludlow food festival, a serious looking man with a central European accent sampled my very first batch of vodka and purchased two bottles on the spot. An hour later a young man arrived at my booth and said:“my father says I must try your vodka”.That is the greatest award I have ever received.
Article supplied by Scott Kirkwood of Kirkwood Distillery