At the heart of our distilling process lie Tarquin’s three 250 litre hand-beaten copper pot-stills.

TAMARA, SENARA & TRESSA

To this day, these stills continue to be fired by direct naked flame and are sealed at the joints with bread dough. These distilling techniques are about as old-school as you can find.

Alongside these original copper pot-stills proudly sits the newest addition to the distillery, FERARRA – a state of the art, one-of-a-kind 500 litre copper still. Championing a combination of the progressively modern and the authentically traditional Tarquin uses these four stills collectively to create his internationally award-winning spirits.

When it’s time to create our Tarquin’s British Blackberry Gin we first start the process of distilling our flagship Tarquin’s Cornish Dry Gin as the base. To do this, 11 of the botanicals are added  to our stills (with the exception of the violets, British blackberries and Cornish wildflower honey) and left to macerate overnight in a wheat based neutral grain spirit.

In the morning Tarquin’s simply add the missing violets, to complete the botanical recipe, and then it’s time to fire up the stills.

As the stills heat up Tarquin is constantly monitoring the process, nosing and tasting as the distilled spirit as it comes off the still at different temperatures. We collect only the purest ‘heart of the distillation’ (achieved when the still has reached the magic temperature of 78’c), collecting and setting aside the ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ cuts (the first and last parts of the distillation) that don’t make the most selective taste and texture grade.

Post distillation, this ‘hearts cut’ (around 76% abv neat Gin) is lovingly infused with the most brilliant British blackberries we can lay our hands on. We patiently let this infuse until Tarquin feels the balance is just right. Finally we cut the gin with de-mineralized Cornish spring water to bring it down to the desired 38% abv, and then just before bottling we add a touch of Cornish wildflower honey for some rounded sweetness and balance.

Every single bottle is then individually hand-filled, hand-labelled, dipped into a slow-cooker filled with paraffin wax, stamped with our Puffin logo, given batch tasting notes and then individually hand-signed.

We truly believe in the value of maximising the human-touch at every stage of the process.

NO SHORT-CUTS ~ NO OUT-SOURCING ~ NO COMPROMISE

When Tarquin puts “Handcrafted in Cornwall” on every bottle, he really does mean it.