BY GUY VENABLES           

Not far from where I live the first English gin to use alcohol distilled from grapes, rather than grain, is to be born. And Chilgrove is its name.
Praise be. For gins that use wine-based spirit are in a different class. It’s akin to the di erences found in the gap between cognac and vodka. There’s a silkiness and a depth. Incidentally, the Dutch jenever gins all used wine-based spirits until they were forced to switch to grain after the Little Ice Age in the 16th century caused a significant wine shortage. A few have since reverted to wine, but most have stayed with grain.
Chilgrove co-founders Christopher Tetley and Celia Beaumont-Hutchings jacked it their day jobs and said: “I know, let’s invent our own brand of gin.” Brave words and even braver is the deed because embarking on a single-brand voyage through the booze trade means being ready to battle with colossal giants. They began years of
exhaustive gin tasting and researching. They found their favourites and slowly started analysing the flavours and what they liked about them.
I met Christopher in the White Horse in the eponymous Chilgrove and we started to compare notes. I’d also been on a gin odyssey last year and tasted
nearly 200 varieties and here’s the thing: because the individual botanicals put into gin are often quite strong, they have to be counteracted with an opposing or complementary flavour. Many of these are totally different so it can end up like a game of Buckeroo on the palate.
Finally, they agreed upon a concoction of 12 ingredients, but something wasn’t quite right. Then they took out the grapefruit and bingo! On my first taste (when tasting gin you always start by sipping it neat) I was surprised to blurt out that it was good enough to be that rarity of drinks – a sipping gin. And, like my favourite, the wine-based Mahon Xorigeur, it stands to be sipped neat followed by sips of very cold water. It does, however, make a fine gin and tonic, a gorgeous martini and is my gin of choice for my favourite cocktail, a Negroni.
Not only that, the rectangular bottles are the perfect shape for stacking on the bookshelf in your boat.
www.chilgrovegin.com