Greensand Ridge London Dry Gin

Product Information

Our perfect serve is in a highball glass with plenty of ice, and a premium and slightly tart apple juice. Try 50ml of spirit and 75ml of apple juice. Add a sprig of mint to garnish. The company achieved carbon neutrality across its supply chain in 2018 through its support of a carbon offsetting project in India. It is working to reduce its direct carbon footprint (measured at 9.2 tonnes of CO2e, carbon dioxide equivalent, in its 2019 sustainability report) as far as possible. Drunk neat the Raspberry flavour can be quite elusive at first; the spirit really comes alive with the addition of some sweetness and sharpness. So drinking as a long drink with tonic (try Fever Tree Mediterranian Tonic) really enhances the spirit. Garnish with a slice of lemon and fresh mint.

GG: Your London Dry Gin has already won several awards – how important have these been to the business? Principal settlements lying on the southern part of the Greensand in Sussex, adjacent to the South Downs, include Storrington (at the eastern end of the ridge) and Midhurst. Petersfield marks the western end, where the ridge turns north east. Settlements on the main part of the ridge, running from Surrey into Kent include Haslemere, Godalming, Reigate and Redhill, Oxted and Sevenoaks. As we work with quality surplus produce, the varieties that we press each year varies depending on what will go to waste, meaning that the spirit will take on a mildly different character from year to year. Tasting Notes We believe Apple Brandy is the rightful whisky of the Weald region, where apple orchards dot the countryside. We work with local farmers to take only fruit which would otherwise go to waste, ensuring we mitigate food waste while leaving the best fruit for culinary uses. Friend, Peter (2008). Southern England. Looking at the Natural Landscapes. London: Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-724743-1.Powered by 100% renewable electricity and with a zero target for chemical use and non-recyclable waste, Greensand Ridge Distillery is a truly sustainable business. So yes, they use advanced technology and 100% renewable energy, but they also work with their region’s farmers to reduce food waste at the farm gate by fermenting and distilling quality produce that supermarkets won’t take. Will Edge grew up in the Weald of Kent before, like many classmates from Sevenoaks, starting a white-collar career living and working in London. The location is influenced both by the fruit farms we work with and the nearby childcare in the form of the grandparents! Our carbon neutral certification is the culmination of a great deal of work over the last year” says Greensand Ridge founder and distiller, Will Edge. “It doesn’t change our spirits but it’s a statement of what is important to us as a new and growing business.”

Will Edge: One of the key aspects of our sustainability drive is to work with farmers to use surplus produce, mitigating food waste. That mainly plays into our fruit brandies, eau-de-vie’s, and rums. Gin botanicals can be dried and stored and so a glut of produce is unlikely to go to waste. Our golden Rum is made in-house from scratch, using the surplus molasses from sugar production. This is different from most Rums which are often cheap, poor quality Carribean rum with sugar and spices added to create an intensity of flavour to mask the spirit. In the early days we didn’t talk about ourselves as a sustainable distillery. There is quite a lot in the plan about using food waste, but there are not a lot of other mentions to sustainability. It was a given, really.” Will Edge: It’s simply a belief that any business should be run sustainability by default. I started out by just factoring that into all my decision-making. But as I’ve been promoting our spirits there has been so much interest in this approach that it’s become a recognised part of our brand. I want people to buy our spirits because they taste amazing and look beautiful, so it’s not immediately obvious from our bottles, but dig a bit deeper and it comes through strongly. It’s a differentiator for us now but, hopefully, in the near future, it won’t be.

THE GIN TO MY TONIC THOUGHTS

Over the course of two and a half hours, you will learn all there is to know about gin distillation. On arrival, you’ll relax with a tea or coffee while you hear about the history of distilling and the role of botanicals, you’ll then select your own botanicals with assistance from our head distiller, and then enjoy a complimentary Gin and Tonic while you distil your bottle. Broadly speaking, the Greensand Ridge runs along the northern edge of the Weald in a west-east arc from Surrey into Kent, just south of and parallel to the chalk escarpment of the North Downs. The ridge is separated by a mixed deep and shallow, fertile depression from the North Downs referred to as the ' Vale of Holmesdale', formed on Gault Clay, and a narrow band of Upper Greensand that outcrops at the foot of the chalk scarp (ridge). In some places the clay vale is very narrow: for example at Oxted the gap between summits of the Greensand Ridge and the North Downs is less than 2 kilometres (1.2mi). NCA Profile:120 Wealden Greensand". Natural England. Archived from the original on 10 July 2016 . Retrieved 18 May 2020.

Given our raison d’être is to use surplus produce, this was right in our comfort zone and once we had disgorged the beer from the kegs and de-gassed it, it was a case of pumping it into our still and skilfully distilling it to capture the best of the hoppy maltiness to achieve a refined, fine spirit.Distilling surplus beer isn’t new. It’s been done for years and is part of distilling’s rich history of using surplus agricultural and food produce to make spirits. We’ve kinda lost touch with that in the UK, but in Europe, waste beer often ends up as an ‘Eau-de-vie de Bière’ or ‘Bierbrand’. The Greensand Ridge, formed of Lower Greensand, much of which is sandstone and where hardest is locally termed Bargate stone, is a remnant of the Weald dome, part of the great Weald-Artois Anticline that runs from south-east England into northern France. As an organisation that set out to change how society values food waste, having to scrap this unsold beer was causing us sleepless nights. Upcycling it into a fantastic product that will also benefit those hit hard by Covid-19 is the silver lining we needed.” - Toast CEO Rob Wilson

The issue of food waste is such a huge one, I’m never going to make much of a dent in it myself. But what I can do is demonstrate with actions that great surplus produce can have a life beyond landfill, and get people to think about the effect of how we shop. At the moment, sustainability is not something people look for in premium products, but I’d like to be part of a shift in consumer perceptions. The Gin Guild: What inspired you to establish a craft distillery and how did you find the right location? Using quality surplus produce means the varieites we use will change year-on-year, thus this spirit’s character will subtly shift depending that year’s varieties. The varieties we have used are: Home brews were his hobby – featuring at his wedding – before becoming a dad triggered a return to the Kent countryside and a commitment to a more sustainable lifestyle. Fuller's earth, which lies interbedded between the Bargate and Sandgate Layers, was much quarried for the cloth industry. The seam, which lies about 20 to 30 feet below the surface between Nutfield and Bletchingley, was considered the best in the country and for several centuries large quantities were excavated. Resources are now running low and little is now extracted. [10] Settlements [ edit ]

When it comes to gin, Greensand Ridge sources most of its botanicals locally, including hawthorn berries, poppy seeds, oak moss, honey, gorse flowers and rose hips. It also has plans to make its own gin base spirit from waste food products. As Will explains, botanicals make up a tiny proportion of a gin recipe compared to the ‘fermentables’ that make the base spirit, so achieving sustainability in the latter is an important goal. The result is “Inbread Moonshine”, an Eau-de-vie de biere with a 44% alcohol content - also the percentage of bread that goes to waste. It’s a clear spirit, most akin to an unaged whisky. There are delicate aromas of hops and freshly baked bread, hints of maltiness which develop further on the palate with flavours of warm shortbread, coffee and chocolate, and a sweet hoppy finish with a big juicy, creamy mouthfeel. A practice of treating the Greensand Ridge regularly as part of the Weald arose in geology when natural scientists, starting in the late 18th century, began to include it in their analysis of the geological history of the Wealden dome. Geology still confuses by using interchangeably the Weald and the "Wealden Anticline" that embraces all the land bounded by the chalk escarpments of the North and South Downs, including the Greensand hills.