The Yorkshire Explorer Distillery launches four gins using foraged ingredients.
The Yorkshire Explorer Distillery launches four gins using foraged ingredients
The team of foragers, innovators and experienced gin distillers behind The Yorkshire Explorer Distillery has expertly crafted and combined a selection of flavoursome botanicals sourced from across Yorkshire to create four exceptional new gins. Blended from seasonal and foraged ingredients, the gins are infused with sophisticated crisp flavours, offering a choice of refreshing options ideal for socialising this Spring.
The new gins include:
• The Yorkshire Garden £28.00 50cl – this quintessentially British gin conjures the taste of an English afternoon in the country. Combining fresh elderflower, cucumber, lemon, mint and pressed apple juice which impart incredibly fresh and bright notes. A cooling and refreshing, sweet and subtle gin perfect for a sunny day. Mint and cucumber which is left over from the event side of the business are distilled using the vacuum still to get the essence of each flavour. They are then blended with the Gin with an Elderflower Cordial which are batched in house in June.
• Yorkshire Dry £28.00 50cl – is a homage to the Yorkshire countryside and a perfectly balanced gin that includes a blend of botanicals distilled individually to preserve their full essence. The refined flavours are smooth, spicy and packed with juniper and citrus notes. Juniper is combined with tobacco leaf, tonka, lemon verbena, cardamon, bay and the citrus finish of lemon verbena.
• Grapefruit & Elderflower £18.00 50cl - soft elderflower notes, with hints of subtle juniper are paired with a citrus tang that provide a floral and sweet taste with spicy flavours that linger. Elderflower, juniper, coriander seed, cardamon, lemon peel and grapefruit peel. Elderflower cordial is produced in house during June from elderflowers collected from the local woodlands surrounding the distillery. The grapefruit skins are a by product from the fresh grapefruit juice used within the Forage Bar & Kitchen.
• Forced Rhubarb £28.00 50cl - Yorkshire forced rhubarb, ginger and cardamom are cold distilled and mixed with the house dry gin. The pulp left over from the forced rhubarb distillation is then blended into a syrup which is added to the gin. The tangy rhubarb notes are balanced with hints from the subtle spice.
Each gin can be purchased separately or as part of gift box - £20.00 for 5cl bottles of Yorkshire Garden, Forced Rhubarb, Grapefruit and Elderflower and Yorkshire Dry.
The Yorkshire Explorer Distillery also offers the Explorers Guild – a bi-monthly subscription box containing 2 x 20cl spirits from the experimental range.
Callum Houston, gin distiller and founder of The Yorkshire Explorer Distillery, explained: “When I launched the gin distillery during the pandemic, the philosophy was always to create incredible spirits using locally sourced, sustainable produce. Distilling gin in the heart of Yorkshire using a range of botanicals from across the county means that we can champion Yorkshire produce. Foragers at heart, we enjoy nothing more than distilling and infusing our finds with our range of spirits. I’m passionate about playing around with flavours to create a range of signature drinks that will appeal to all taste buds.”
The Yorkshire Explorer Distillery was founded on the principle that no two two botanicals are identical so need to be treated individually. To achieve this, the distillation process involves the use of temperature, timing and pressure along with five other variables to tailor the treatment of each botanical.
Callum added: “By using this distilling matrix, we can can distill the freshest and most delicate botanicals and achieve a level of precision vastly beyond that of traditional distillation, capturing the exact essence of that botanical. Every botanical has a certain temperature, pressure or timing at which it exacts the optimum flavour. Our aim is to optimise the distillation of every botanical to create something extraordinary.”