The tickets were sold out well in advance for our proposed tour of the City of London Distillery (COLD), known for its range of exciting gins. No surprise, given the gin-plosion in the UK, and around the world, over the last decade (since COLD, more than 300 gin brands have emerged in the UK itself). I finally had to use some desijugaad to get us (mixologist Yangdup Lama and I) on their Gin Experience tour. The distillery is on Bride Street, which is just off Fleet Street. It came as quite a surprise to us, to realise that a full-fledged distillery was operating in the City of London and, quite literally, underground.
What lies beneath
Shades of Neverwhere , Neil Gaiman’s fantastical (and fantastic) novel about the London we know little of, were going through my head, and I wondered what magical persons we would encounter as we descended a narrow flight of stairs. At the top, somewhat paradoxically given that this is a temple to gin, is a replica of Gin Lane , the famous painting by the British painter, William Hogarth. The original is currently at the British Museum, and it is described as “a scene of urban desolation with gin-crazed Londoners, notably a woman who lets her child fall to its death and an emaciated ballad-seller”.
- The English troops who fought alongside the Dutch during the Thirty Years' War, were impressed with the courage shown by the Dutch troops (they attributed this to the juniper-flavoured spirit). Te drink was dubbed “Dutch courage”. The Dutch themselves knew this drink as Jenever or Geneivre. (Alfie shows us a bottle of Bols Jenever, one of the more famous brands of this Dutch style of gin.) The British troops took the drink back to England and, by 1717, it was all the rage in the land.
Thankfully, our reality is not so grim and the first thing that we see on reaching the bottom of the stairs is a cocktail bar — the COLD Bar. It appears that proprietor Jonathan Clark already had a bustling bar, within which in 2012, a distillery took shape. A Gin and Tonic follows, made with the City of London Dry Gin. This also happens to be the first gin distillery for over 200 years in the City of London (now just a tiny part of the metropolis of London but, in every sense, its beating heart).
The COLD bar is awash with patrons, and on one side are a set of gleaming copper stills, whilst at the back are the meeting rooms, where our tour is to begin. Barely a dozen of us are assembled around the table, clutching our drinks, as Alfie, a brand ambassador for the distillery, introduces us to the juniper berries. He encourages us to press, roll and smell, for it is this flavourful berry that gives gin its name and which is also the primary botanical flavouring agent.
Lesson in a bathtub
Today, gin has grown in popularity around the world and it’s not just the classic style, named London Dry Gin, which has seen a revival. There are other older styles, like the Old Tom Gin, Bathtub Gin and Sloe Gin. As Alfie informs us, Bathtub Gin is a style which was originally made via a cheaper process called “cold compounding” and which also has multiple naming myths, one of the more popular ones being that early producers used their bathtubs to infuse the spirits with botanicals and fruits. Thankfully, newer brands are now made to higher quality standards than before, Ableforth’s for one.
- The artist Hogarth was ahead of his time when it came to propaganda, as he had created two paintings, Gin Lane and Beer Street . Gin Lane ’s wild excesses were viewed in contrast to Beer Street , which showed the benefits of drinking good old British ale.
Most of COLD’s gins are named in tribute to its location, and the last gin we taste before we visit the business end of the distillery, i.e. the stills, is the Square Mile Gin, made at a higher than usual ABV of 47.3% (most spirits are bottled at 40% or 42.8% alcohol by volume) and served with Fever Tree tonic and a slice of grapefruit in a big balloon glass. Note to self: the sheer visual delight of drinking your G&T in a glass like this, as opposed to the normal highball glass, can transform your experience.
Another lesson on the tour: if our guide is to be believed, it is considered bad luck to name the stills after a man. The three shining copper pot stills we had seen on entering are named Jennifer, Clarissa and Elizabeth (yes indeed, after Her Majesty).
