My distilling and brewing career started aged ten, playing around with ginger beer and assorted potions.  After one too many explosions, my parents attempted to ban my illicit mixing.  Rookie mistake as this only spurred a lifelong interest in creating unusual concoctions.

For four decades, I’ve kept myself busy experimenting with dozens of unusual fruits. Believe me, the English countryside abounds with a variety of stone fruit just waiting to be picked and pickled in booze.

It was this experience that gave me the confidence to make a gin to accompany food.  And so Pinkster was born in 2013.  I didn’t set out to produce a pink gin but after working my way through an entire fruit bowl, I quickly discovered that raspberry delivered the best flavour.

Buoyed by this success, along came Hedgepig. We macerate the fruit with the Pinkster base gin adding good quality sugar in the traditional way in 25 litre tubs. Stone fruit needs to sit for quite a long time for the full flavour to be imparted and the sugar not only sweetens but also acts as a preservative.

Although it’s relatively easy to make fruit gin, it’s another matter making it well.

We only use fresh, locally grown fruit.  We only pick in season – often on our hands and knees foraging from hedgerows – and we don’t go overboard on sugar.  Best of all, we tend to have a higher alcoholic content than many other fruit gins liqueurs.

Enjoy our suggestion servings.  My personal favourite is a nip or three instead of port or sweet wine at the end of an evening.  Even my parents have been known to join me.

Chin chin