October 28, 2016
Hey, if you're going to live and work in a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve (link: here) - the least you can do is make a good gin. That's what I always say.
OK, I've never actually said that. But if you ever stop off at the Corris Craft Centre - possibly on your way to King Arthur's Labyrinth or the Corris Railway and Museum - you'll start saying it too.
Having only recently moved to the area, I decided we needed to stop in to see what the craft centre had on offer. Right in the middle of the Dyfi Forest, the craft centre in a former slate mine has some very nice craft stalls - including one that focuses largely on wooden furniture where I made a mental note to try to take the furniture-making classes that were on offer.
Come for the crafts, stay for the gin
But after you've walked through all these you'll find the Dyfi Distillery. Don't be fooled by the size, or the amount of concrete. Tiny for a distillery, if you ask you'll be given two tasting options - Original and Pollination. The Original won a silver medal at the 2016 International Wine and Spirit competition, and is a very smooth gin. Also it is made with something called bog myrtle, and who wouldn't like that. The Pollination is chock full of herbaceous tones from what we were told were hand-foraged wild flowers, aromatic leaves, fruits and conifer tips. Trust me, if you like a flavorful gin, Pollination is a great one.
Speaking to the woman behind the counter, we learned that the distillery had only recently opened, and it only had two 100-litre stills. It only ran - at the most - one distillation a week. According to their website: 'if we can't gather the ingredients we need, we can't distill. Commercially this is probably a mistake. But the result is a Welsh gin like nothing else: just as it should be.' Yessssss….. Only able to make gin 200 bottles at a time, the first batch of Pollination had sold out within the first few days it was bottled.
Now really, who would have though gin would have been so popular in Britain?
But in all seriousness, the distillery and the gin were both great. Not only was the distillery dominated by the most Lord of the Rings-like hand-drawn map of the Dyfi Biosphere that I've ever seen, but you could certainly taste all the local herbs, berries and conifer tips that went into the gin. We bought a bottle of Pollination - and the label tells us that it is from Batch 12 of 2016, and that it was bottled by someone named Pete, who has signed it.
Before I left, I wanted to warn the woman behind the counter that if American hipsters ever heard about an artisanal-hand-picked UNESCO-biosphere-sourced small-batch mountainside-Welsh-slate-quarry gin distillery that makes what is described as 'a wonderfully evocative restorative', they would likely be overrun within minutes. But I suppose that's the point.
