Gorilla Spirits Distillery Tour
We do like a road trip. Mrs. Gin and I had heard good things about the Gorilla Spirits distillery so we loaded up the wagon with survival gear, crampons and the like and set off for deepest, darkest Hampshire. We couldn’t miss the chance to meet co-founder Andy Daniels at his base in Four Marks, near Alton.
On arrival we were immediately struck by Andy’s almost clinical attention to detail. This was no fly-by-night attempt to cash in on the gin boom, but a serious undertaking where much time and money had clearly been spent getting the foundations right for a long term enterprise.
We asked Andy why he had decided to start his distilling project. His imagination was first fired by the licence granted to Sipsmith in 2008 (the first in over 100 years). Andy “wanted a discernably different gin and tonic” and set about the task in painstaking detail in 2010. Five years later, the first batch of Silverback Mountain Strength Gin was produced. During those five years, a licence was granted, Dr. David Clutton (a renowned consultant in the world of spirits) enlisted, the distillery designed and built from the ground up (mostly by Andy himself) and Silverback Mountain Strength Gin produced after many iterations were discarded.
The distillery itself is extremely impressive. At the heart is the 200 litre copper pot head still named Mugwaneza; in Rwanda (gorilla territory) this translates to ‘she who is content’. There is also a fractioning column for vodka production, a pressurized control room and state-of-the-art software controlling the still processes. Production capacity is 50,000 bottles per year. Bottling is currently done on site but will soon be outsourced when the new, sexy bottle is introduced. Gorilla Spirits also makes premium vodka and distills gin for a number of other producers. This is an industrial grade distillery on a small scale.
It would have been rude not to sample the produce. We eagerly supped on Silverback on the rocks and with assorted tonics. Full review here but suffice to say we believe this will be an even more popular gin when the word spreads.
As befitting a man with a vision, Andy has many plans going forward. Look out for more products; next up is an Old Tom, which we cannot wait to sample. Andy has built very solid foundations with Gorilla Spirits and the only way is up. We will watch his progress with great interest.
