Salcombe Gin Distillery

Despite being a relatively new name on the UK gin scene, the story of Salcombe gin actually starts around 20 or so years ago, when co-founders Howard Davies and Angus Lugsdin met in the eponymous town in Devon. Both were teaching sailing on the coast, and evidently got a taste for gin following the hard days of tacking and jibing. Time passed and both Howard and Angus moved away from Salcombe, but they eventually returned and consequently got chatting about creating their own gin.

Their distillery is built within an old boat repair workshop right on the waterfront, and Hoshi and Provident sit within those walls - these are the 60 litre copper stills from Portugal that make Salcombe Gin. Their London dry gin features a selection of 13 botanicals, notably fresh lemon, lime and red grapefruit peels, inspired by the Salcombe Fruitiers. These were copper-bottomed ships built in Salcombe that travelled the world, bringing back hulls filled with exotic treats. Working with historians, the distillers have figured out the routes these ships would have taken, and endeavour to source some of their botanicals from those routes.
And that’s not all! They also run their own gin school, where you can learn the art of gin distillation on an adorably tiny copper still.