OUR STORY BEGAN AT OUR HOME, ON THE HILLS OF HEPPLE, ONE OF BRITAIN’S LAST WILD SANCTUARIES FOR JUNIPER.

Celebrated foraging chef Valentine Warner brought legendary bartender Nick Strangeway and distillery developer Cairbry Hill up to Hepple in the remote Northumbrian National Park to meet Walter Riddell, owner of the Hepple estate in March 2013. A bone-chilling wind was blowing from the east, as ever.

Our original plan was to make something esoteric, but out on the moor the wind hounded us to take refuge amongst a stand of ancient junipers, glittering with green and purple berries.

The gin revolution was underway, and innovation was coming thick and fast. The innovation was about new botanical inclusions, discoveries of ancient recipes and of new distilleries that honoured places, people.

As we huddled amongst the shaking juniper, bejewelled with berries, it became clear that something core to gin had never been fully revealed. In our chilly Aladdin’s cave was something bright, complex, glittering – the true essence of gin.