WA’s The West Winds and the UK’s Hendrick’s Gin

The origins of one of the world’s favourite spirits can be traced back to medieval times, but nowadays, gin is a thoroughly modern tipple, at the heart of many cocktails. Gabi Mills explores two brilliant examples of the juniper-infused drop — WA’s The West Winds and the UK’s Hendrick’s Gin — and discovers the secrets to an ancient distilling process

Hendricks Gin

If The Wall Street Journal sees fit to declare Hendrick’s gin the very best in the world then who am I to argue?

The gin - which arrives packaged in the kind of brown glass, stout-looking bottle you imagine one of William Hogarth’s ruined mothers would sup from - is wonderfully different from many of its mass market competitors.

The company may appear to have its history in the mists of time from the creation of a quirky hybrid still - the Carter-Head and Copper pot, which uniquely holds a flavour basket high up in its neck, filtering the botanical essences (rose petals and cucumber among others) at Hendrick’s heart to the expertise of respected whisky distiller, William Grant & Sons (home of Glenfiddich, The Balvenie and Grant’s) who’s experimentation created the ‘perfect gin’ but really, the company’s only been around since 1999.

Brilliant marketing gimmicks aside (their website is glorious, in a Monty Python-esque way), the real reason Hendrick’s is so special is that, despite being widely available to those who seek out such things, the company only produces 450 litres per batch.

That’s a drop in the gin ocean if you compare it to the big guns like Gordon’s, Beefeater or Bombay.

Add to the mix Hendrick’s extraordinary pursuit of the more unusual taste notes for their gin and you’ve got one unique addition to the drinks cabinet on your hands. For instance in May 2013, Lesley Gracie (Hendrick’s master distiller) and Hendrick’s global brand ambassador, David Piper, armed only with a miniature still, a septuagenarian moustachioed explorer called Charles Brewer-Carias, and a sturdy pair of boots, went to the Guayana Highlands of Venezuela in their ongoing search for new and interesting flavours to add to that one-of-a-kind mother still at Hendrick’s HQ.

More than just an excuse to win a few column inches in the media, the trip proved to be a hugly valuable journey of discovery for Lesley and her team, discovering unusual new flavourings to produce a ‘special edition’ small batch of gin based on their exotic travels.

Armed with her tiny ten-litre alembic still, Lesley made a number of distillates from promising plant species pointed out to her by Charles and the local tribesman, but it was one botanical in particular that captured her senses, that of the most unusual, ‘Scorpion Tail’.

Believed by natives of the jungle to be a plant with magical powers for warding away evil spirits and traditionally used in tea infusions to treat stomach complaints, Scorpion Tail has an intriguing complex deep green note that will work well with the peculiar character of Hendrick’s gin - worth an expedition of one’s own to the local bottle shop to seek it out.

hendricksgin.com

The West Winds Gin

WA’s own gin is created from the state’s landscape itself, which, just like the wines the region is famous for, imbues a flavour of the ‘terroir’ in each highball glass of G & T.

Native botanicals, like wattle seed and bush tomato are the ingredients which help give this gin its unique flavour base, mixed with the pure, triple-filtered rainwater which has fallen in the Margaret River region, flowing through each bottle’s veins like a clarifying splash.

The western, seafaring nature of the distillery’s location - in Albany - is the inspiration behind the brand’s name, a tribute, so the owners say, to the ‘ocean breezes used for centuries by sailors to cross the Indian Ocean’ from the Cape of Good Hope to our own western shores.

Just like Hendrick’s, The West Winds Gin has won its fare share of fans and accolades, despite being a relative newcomer to the scene.

Jeremy Spencer heads up the team who produced The West Winds Gin The Sabre and The West Winds Gin The Cutlass, two gin varieties which went on to win the double gold and gold medals at the 2011 San Francisco World Spirits competition and double gold and silver medals in the 2013 competition.

“Although those awards give us validation,” says Jeremy, West Winds director of Sales, Booze and Buccaneering, “what’s really contributed to our success is the growing interest generally in the provenance of food and drink among consumers. So people nowadays want to know where their beef comes from, or asparagus, or in our case, gin. It’s been a real case of great timing for our brand.

“I’d say too that our success is also due to the massive amount of support from the bartending community, gatekeepers of flavour and brands.”

Like Hendrick’s, Jeremy and his team have created unique, ‘rare and rude’ versions of their gin.

“We produced The Dirty Harry, which was a 44% proof version of the Sabre served in a magnum bottle - just 99 of them for our special clients.”

“When we did research before we started the brand there were three words which people said when they thought of gin: depressed English grandmothers. So we certainly had our work cut out for us,” he laughs.

“A badly made G and T is a sentence, whereas a well made one is a gift. Thanks to the big brands investment we get to enjoy the gin movement as many bars now see gin outselling vodka, making it the tipple of choice,” says Jeremy.

Not bad for a little artisanal WA distillery holding its own against the big international guns.

thewestwindsgin.com

LINK: WA’s The West Winds and the UK’s Hendrick’s Gin