A to Z of Gin: B

B is for botanicals, which turn a vodka into gin. To be a gin, one of the botanicals – plants, flowers and herbs – must be juniper berries, which are added to the gin during distillation.   There are different ways of doing this, either soaked in the alcohol in the kettle of the still during distillation, or suspended in a botanicals basket in the vapour trail above the still. We make our gins using the London Dry “one shot” method, which means that all the botanicals are added at the same time (whether soaked in the alcohol or put in a botanical basket: we use a combination of these two) and nothing is done to the resulting alcohol after distillation Gin botanicals

A to Z of Gin: A

A is for alcoholics, without which gin wouldn’t be experiencing its current boom. Only joking: A is for Angelica Root, used in most gins, including ours. It’s a magic ingredient as it holds the flavours of all the other botanicals together – it essentially marries them together and holds them, giving the gin its substance Angelica

The gin is in

We are relieved and excited to let you know that the gin is finally in!  Launched just in time for World Gin Day on 13 June, our London Dry Gin was on the tasting menu at The Gin Bar in Wale Street, Cape Town.

Bottles are available for sale from the Distillery and we are slowly seeking stockists and can be found on the shelf in the two gin bars in Cape Town as well as a few local Woodstock places.

The Salt River Gin, using botanicals unique to the Western Cape including buchu and kapokbos, will be released this week.

While we are not having an official launch until the summer, we are doing lots of profile raising and are excited to be hosting the closing dinner of the Cape Town Street Food Festival at the Distillery in late July.

Watch this space!

Hope on Hopkins Distillery

We’re really pleased to be able to report that we’re nearly ready to launch.  Its been a long, hard and at times frustrating journey, but the end is finally in sight.  We’ve perfected our single malt vodka and are very happy with our first style of gin, a slightly South African take on a classic London dry.  The final frontier is getting the correct warehousing approvals from the South African Revenue Service.  We started dialogue with them back in July and it’s taken this long for them to figure out what they should do with us: the one big issue of being the first distillery in Cape Town – they have never had to deal with such things before.  We are hopeful that this will be sorted out in the coming weeks and are aiming for a mid-May launch.

Final form labels

Final form labels

We’ve launched on social media: find @HopeOnHopkins on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook; and are building our website at the moment.

Our bottles are here, labels have gone to print and it will then just be a matter of filling the bottles. Watch this space!

Finalised bottle and artwork

Finalised bottle and artwork

Happy New Year!

We can’t believe that it is already 2015 – the last year went by in a whirlwind of builders, dust and gorgeous Cape Town days. We had hoped to launch our gin before the end of 2014, but equipment teething problems mean that it will be a Q1 2015 launch. We’ve learnt a lot along the way and have been helped by many amazing people.

We’re very happy to report that our living space is now finished: and pleased to say that the 6 months of dust, noise and cold showers were worth it. We’re really happy in our new home and enjoy “living in a distillery” even if it’s not quite fully operational yet!

Apologies for the lack of photos and lack of blog updates. We’re having problems with the server but hope to get that sorted out soon. All the best to you all for a happy 2015!