Haven Distillery is a very small, but complete cottage distillery. Working from their home, in Herefordshire, in a converted outbuilding, Duncan and Alex Fox create gin and grow half of the botanicals they use in their garden.
Haven Distillery, named after the hamlet of around a dozen houses they live in, was founded in 2015 and since launching Sly Gin in June 2016 hasn’t looked back.
Duncan was formally a professional engineer and Alex owned and ran a herb nursery and so combining Alex’s skills and Duncan’s passion for gin, launched Sly Gin in two very different forms, the first a classic London Dry and the other a delicious ‘signature botanical’ London Dry Gin featuring Lemon Verbena. Only a few months later the Lemon Verbena Sly Gin was awarded ‘Signature Botanical Gin of the Year 2016’ by the Craft Distilling Expo.
The secret of their wonderful gins is that the home grown botanicals, which include lemon thyme, bay, apple mint, rosemary and lavender, are picked fresh for distilling. These and other more traditional botanicals are cold distilled drop by drop in an almost complete vacuum. The carefully captured flavours are combined with the softness of vapour infused Italian juniper and finally proofed to premium strength of 43% ABV with naturally pure Holywell Malvern spring water.
2017 saw the launch of a third gin to the Sly Gin family and Haven Distillery’s Pink Grapefruit Sly Gin is proving to be as popular as the others. It also saw a Great Taste Award for Sly Gin – Lemon Verbena!
Sly Gin is truly handmade in batches of just 100 bottles at a time and only 200 bottles currently produced each week. Each bottle has a handwritten batch and bottle number and the top sealed in wax to create a genuinely good and truly exclusive gin.
Haven Distillery, Tump Ash Farm, Herefordshire, HR4 8JF
01544 319335