Highgate gin microdistillery turns 17th Century inspiration into a winning formula

                                                                                                                                                              Photo ©Wired




Up until 2008 Ian Hart was a headhunter for the banking Industry. Since the collapse of Lehman, however, Hart's life has taken a very different path. Already a lover of fine wine, he made a radical departure from his former life and set up the Sacred Gin 
microdistillery in Highgate, the first microdistillery of its kind in the UK.


Hart didn't want to produce just any old gin, so he spent a year studying the seventeenth century 
Horticus Malabaricus and other sources to better understand botanicals, herbs and other elements, that give gins their unique flavour.


Sacred gin is manufactured in tiny quantities in Hart’s boutique distillery using triple distilled grain spirit (alcohol) supplied by the Master of the Worshipful Company of Distillers and twelve different botanicals. Those include juniper, cardamom, nutmeg, oranges & lemons and a special frankincense imported from Oman that apparently smells of Marijuana.  It is this frankincense, 
Boswellia Sacra
, from which the product name is derived.


Reviewers have waxed lyrical about Sacred Gin's taste. "Creamy and complex but still lovely with tonic", says one; "a taste bomb that makes just about every other gin seem like smokey firewater" oozes another.


It certainly seems like Hart is doing somethig right. He won the 2009 International gin masters competition and his products are carried by the likes of Selfridges, Fortnums and Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons


sacredspiritscompany.com