CREATED IN KT7

 
Four of the six founders- from left to right: Andy,Richard, Bede and Gavin, at The Farmers’ Market, Thames Ditton on 22 September 2018. Plus Mattias and Tim - not shown.
 
 

A local story

We are six local friends all living within a stones throw each other in Thames Ditton, with a shared passion for food and drink, who were sitting round the proverbial kitchen table, when the idea of a local gin linked to the history of the local community and area, kicked in. Nine months later and after a number of tastings, extensive research and a lot of hard work Thames Ditton Gin Batch No.1 was launched on the 1st September 2018.

 

A link to local HISTORY

Due to its proximity to Hampton Court we wanted to see if we could find a link to between the local history of the area and Thames Ditton, especially to gin! Having read up more about William III - or William of Orange the Dutch King who encouraged gin drinking (rather than Catholic French Brandy!) - we looked at using orange or blood orange as our main flavouring. Further research led us to Hampton Court Palace kitchen garden where we met the gardeners there and learned about the great work they do keeping alive the herbs, vegetables and fruits that would have been grown, going back to medieval times. Amongst these were lemon thyme and costmary, which, after much tasting…and we spent over 6 months blending and trying different flavours and mixes,…we settled on blood orange and lemon thyme as our main botanicals, over and above the usual base of juniper and coriander found in all London Dry Style gins, plus a hint of costmary for good measure!

 

MADE WITH LOVE

Having created and designed our gin we then needed to think about distilling it! Buying our own still looked like a £100k decision and then you need somewhere safe and secure to locally house it…and then when you throw in health & safety, bottling, labelling etc. we quickly realised we were better off finding another small local enterprise who could help us create our Thames Ditton Gin. We were thrilled to find Dai in Swansea who soon became our new best friend and helped us create the small batch, craft gin we were after in his own beautiful still. Thank you Dai!

In fact many of our customers were actually quite relieved to discover the distillation isn't in a cob web ridden garage and that we have partnered with a specialist craft gin producer to ensure not only of the highest quality but will consistently meets our required standard. Securing a licence and setting up a distillery is a complex and costly exercise, had we taken this route the product would probably not have made it to market at all.

 

A community project

Thames Ditton Gin is a 'community project' and once we have managed to generate a profit we look forward to investing in local community good causes.