20212Gin is now available and tasting delicious. Made to exactly the same recipe as the previous years it is very subtly different simply as the weather has been less hot this summer and so the botanicals from the farm are very slightly more delicate.

Because of its remarkable biodiversity Higher Plot Farm is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. We have always dreamt of finding a way to capture the essence of the beautiful ridge where we live and work so the idea of distilling some of the flora and herbs that surround us was an obvious answer.

And the result….. is the unique spirit of the English countryside. It has fresh delicate meadow sweet and juniper aromas complex enough to marry with a great vermouth in a dry Martini and fresh enough to enliven and lift a gin and tonic. Perfect with a garnish of Somerset Apple.

As wine makers, we know that great wine is made in the vineyard and because no two summers are the same, no two vintages are exactly the same. We are always trying to capture the essence of the summer with our wine. And so naturally enough this was how we approached making gin. During the summer of 2020 we collected herbs and flowers and sent them to be distilled into spirits by friend and gin genius Paul Bowler. Some like Sweet Violet and Sheep’s Sorrel were easy to reject and truth be told, some were actively unpleasant. Eventually from a list of nine trial distilates we came down to the four that most caught our imagination and which seem to co-exist happily together- Meadow Sweet, Rosemary, Thyme and Bay. These are our Langport botanicals.