I arrived at the distillery on a Monday morning in early March, when the daffodils were beginning to push through the gravel of the car park and the air inside the production hall smelled of juniper and warm copper. For the next five days, I would watch, listen, and occasionally participate in the production of gin — a process that, from the outside, seems almost magical and, from the inside, reveals itself to be a combination of science, intuition, and meticulous repetition.
The distillery — a mid-sized craft operation in southern England that asked not to be named — produces approximately 500 bottles of London Dry gin per week, using a single 500-litre copper pot still and a team of three. What follows is a day-by-day account of what I saw.
Monday: Preparation
Production begins not with the still but with the botanicals. The head distiller, whom I'll call Sarah, spent most of Monday morning in the botanical store — a cool, dry room lined with hessian sacks, glass jars, and plastic containers. Each botanical was weighed on a precision scale to within a gram of the recipe specification, then placed in a labelled container.
"People think distilling is the exciting bit," Sarah said, carefully weighing juniper berries into a steel bowl. "It is, in a way. But this is where the gin is really made. If the weights are wrong here, nothing you do at the still can fix it."
The afternoon was spent cleaning. The still was flushed with water, the condenser checked for blockages, the spirit safe inspected and calibrated. The receiving vessels — large glass carboys where the distillate is collected — were washed and sterilised. The attention to hygiene was striking; every surface that the spirit would touch was cleaned to pharmaceutical standards.
Tuesday: The Maceration
At six in the morning, Sarah loaded the still with the base spirit — a neutral grain spirit at 96% ABV, diluted to approximately 60% with water — and added the botanicals. The juniper went in first, followed by the coriander, angelica, citrus peel, and the remaining botanicals. She stirred the mixture gently with a long wooden paddle, then sealed the still and left the botanicals to macerate.
The maceration would last twelve hours — overnight, essentially — allowing the spirit to extract flavours from the botanicals before distillation began. Sarah checked the temperature hourly, maintaining it at a steady 20°C. "Too warm and you extract harsh, bitter compounds from the root botanicals," she explained. "Too cold and you don't extract enough from the seeds and peels."
Wednesday: Distillation Day
Distillation began at seven in the morning. Sarah lit the steam boiler that heats the still's jacket, and within thirty minutes, the first vapours were rising through the copper neck and into the condenser. The distillery filled with a warm, intensely aromatic haze — juniper, citrus, and spice mingling in the humid air.
The first liquid to emerge from the condenser — the "foreshots" — was collected in a separate vessel and discarded. These initial runs contain volatile compounds (primarily methanol and acetaldehyde) that are unpleasant and potentially harmful. Sarah assessed the foreshots by smell and taste, waiting for the moment when the character shifted from harsh and chemical to clean and botanical.
"There," she said, redirecting the flow to the collection vessel. "That's the hearts." The spirit that now flowed from the condenser was crystal clear, intensely aromatic, and unmistakably gin. The juniper was vivid and bright, the citrus sharp, the whole profile singing with botanical intensity.
The hearts run lasted approximately four hours, during which Sarah tasted the spirit every fifteen minutes, monitoring its character for the transition to "tails" — the heavier, oilier compounds that arrive at the end of the run. When she detected the first signs of heaviness — a slight oiliness, a muddying of the flavour — she redirected the flow again, ending the hearts collection.
Thursday: Resting and Reduction
The hearts distillate, collected at approximately 78% ABV, was transferred to a stainless steel resting tank and left overnight. "The spirit needs time to settle," Sarah explained. "Straight off the still, it can be slightly aggressive. Twenty-four hours of rest allows the flavour compounds to integrate."
On Thursday afternoon, the distillate was gradually reduced to bottling strength — 42% ABV — by adding filtered water in small increments. Sarah tasted at each stage, checking that the flavour profile remained balanced as the proof dropped. "The character can change as you dilute," she said. "Some botanicals become more prominent, others recede. You need to taste your way to the target."
Friday: Bottling
The final day was bottling — the most mechanical part of the process, but not without its satisfactions. The gin, now at bottling strength, was pumped into the bottling line's holding tank. Bottles were filled, corked, labelled, and packed into cases — 480 bottles in total, representing a week's work. Sarah inspected every tenth bottle, checking fill levels and label alignment with the attention to detail that characterised every stage of production.
Standing in the loading bay as the last cases were stacked on a pallet, I reflected on what I'd seen. Five days, three people, one still, 480 bottles. The process had been simultaneously more mundane and more extraordinary than I'd expected — mundane in its repetition, extraordinary in the transformation it achieved. A sack of dried berries, a jug of grain spirit, and a copper vessel had become, through patience and precision, something worth drinking, talking about, and writing about.
As I drove away, the distillery shrinking in my rear-view mirror, I opened the window and caught one last breath of juniper-scented air. It smelled like gin. It smelled like work well done.
