UK: The London Distillery Co's Testbed1 gin range

The London Distillery Company announces its first release

The UK’s newest artisanal spirits producer, The London Distillery Company, has announced that its first launch will be a release of four gins under its experimental drinks line, TESTBED.  The name is taken from the site of the distillery – TESTBED1 – a former dairy warehouse turned creative arts space, established by Kevin Cassandro and architect Will Alsop in Battersea, London in 2010.

This initial small-batch release is intended to engage consumers from the outset by highlighting the influence of the organic botanicals and allowing side-by-side comparison of the recipes.  In addition, consumer feedback will help guide future TESTBED product development.

Darren Rook, founder of The London Distillery Company, comments: “The word ‘testbed’ means a platform for experimentation, which aligns with elements of our own philosophy regarding product innovation and challenging our own preconceptions about what works and what doesn’t.  We also feel it’s important to make the recipe development process as transparent as possible by disclosing information other distillers tend not to. This first TESTBED1 release gives us an opportunity to do just that.

“Andrew MacLeod Smith, our distiller, spent the summer designing the gin with Jason Grizzanti, Consulting Master Distiller at the New York Distilling Company and co-owner of the Black Dirt Distillery in Warwick, New York.  The result is a collaboration of Old World and New World, a London Dry style gin inspired by New Western Dry principles. This allowed us to play with several botanicals not typically found in gin, such as lovage root, bilberry and lavender, and led us to coin a term that we feel best represents the product: ‘Anglo-American’.” 

The four recipes developed for the first TESTBED offering will be available at the end of the month as a set of four 10cl bottles at £28 (RRP).  This unprecedented limited release is designed so that consumers can track the evolution of the product during development and note the effects of the various botanicals on the spirit. Feedback can be sent directly to Darren at darren@thelondondistillerycompany.com.

The London Distillery Company will commence production of its whisky in November 2012.  It is the first whisky distillery to be built in London for over 100 years, and the only distillery in the area to offer small-batch premium whisky made entirely on-premises from grain to bottle.

Original source: http://www.testbed1.com/