Our process
To create our Inginious Gin, we teamed up with spirits experts at Sloemotion Distillery in North Yorkshire. Using their 20 years of experience in the drinks market, Joff Curtoys, Sloemotion Distillery Founder, and colleague Ian Mansell, Distiller, created our innovative, small gin recipe.
The ‘clever little gin’ they produced, uses a super-concentration of carefully selected botanicals including the classic gin botanicals Juniper, Coriander, Angelica and Orris, combined with a citrus blend of Lemon Verbena, Lime, Lemongrass and fresh Spruce needles amongst others. This means you get all the gin flavour from just a small pour.
Sloemotion Distillery began by accident when a farm diversification project aimed at improving wildlife habitats, included cutting the hedges less often. This resulted in a bumper crop of Sloes the fruit of the hedgerow blackthorn, to Joff Curtoys a trained conservationist & environmentalist, and his colleagues, who had all grown up sipping home-made Sloe Gin, the seed of an idea was planted, and the business was born.
Joff carried his strong environmental ethos into the heart of the business. So, when it came to choosing a still, rather than choose an elegant and attractive copper still, they chose the highly insulated, computer controlled, energy efficient iStill.
The iStill is a proven award-winning device, capable of producing some of the world’s best spirits, but in a way that minimises environmental impacts. Using less than 20% of the energy of a traditional copper still, unlike most other distilleries Sloemotion Distillery is never hot with wasted energy; it’s always cool, literally and metaphorically. They call this 21st Century Responsible Distilling.
For a food business, being based on a farm is an ideal location to ensure that waste is not wasted but re-used and recycled, often right there. All the “used” botanicals are composted (because of the alcohol it does take a while longer than normal) and returned to the soil. Cardboard is re-used or, via local animal sheds, composted and returned to the land as a soil conditioner. Of course, all waste glass is recycled.
All waste-water from the site goes to a local energy generating biodigester and naturally they use a renewables-only energy supplier. The team at Sloemotion Distillery are so committed that all the staff kitchen food waste is composted and materials recycled. In 2022 the team are planting trees around the farm and village of Barton-le-Willows as a team-building exercise.
Lastly, Joff creates his beloved mini wildflower meadows around the distillery buildings and working with Green Farm farmer, Richard; this helps to create bigger wildlife habitats all over the surrounding land.
Green Farm is alive with wildlife, like few other farms.
In Adam Rogers’ excellent book - “Proof, The Science of Booze” - which we highly recommend by the way – he describes Distillation as a technology for separating what seems inseparable. He credits Maria Hebraea as the “Goddess of the Still” and otherwise known as Maria the Jewess, as fundamentally explaining the art of distillation as a profound tool for separation, up there with filtration and gravity. This is one of the reasons why we believe that the distillation process is essential in our gin production.
Another excellent read – not just about Gin but all things science related in your home that you were unaware of in terms of food – is Matthew Hartings “Chemistry in Your Kitchen”. He eloquently describes a Gin & Tonic as thus: “A Gin & Tonic is something very different to the sum of its parts. The flavour is bright and crisp, the bitterness of the tonic and the juniper-dominated flavours of the gin have become the most interesting part of the drink. Hence, as we explain in our perfect serve, it is essential to use a fresh tonic of your choice, as long as it is sparkling and not from a bottle that has been sat for days on end in the fridge. It really does make all the difference.
Our bottling process
