What an Experience...!

Now that The Herbal Gin Company has opened the Gin Experience which now allows members of the public the previously inaccessible (unless you have a licence from HMRC) ability to distil spirits, the team has been doing more research on the botanicals that we have available for making some fantastic gins.

In doing so, we also want to share some of the interesting facts about the botanicals that are used for the process which are already known to most people with commonly recognised household names.

Fact 1: Gin and New York…?

Readers of an earlier blog on our website will remember about the fenugreek smell that shut

down New York not too long ago (twice)…

However, this isn’t our only story about New York so let’s move from fenugreek to

nutmeg…..

It turns out that 600 years ago, nutmeg was more precious than gold. Pound for pound it cost

more, as it could only be found in the Moluccas archipelago of Indonesia. There was massive demand for this rare spice in Europe and competition raged to control its distribution. Inevitably this less to (sadly usually violent) colonisation of the area. Evidence is available to show that nutmeg was a vital constituent in the making of juniper rich spirit - i.e. gin.

Portugal were the first colonisers off the Moluccas and then it was the Dutch and then the English, after it seized two of the islands in question in 1603. [For any fellow Scots out there,