Dinnewell's

Founded by husband-and-wife team Chris and Sarah Dinnewell in mid-2021, Dinnewell's Gin is currently produced in a tiny 25 litre still in the kitchen of their family home in Birkenshaw, a small town between Leeds and Bradford.

Chris previously worked in brewing, whereas Sarah had spent several years working in the hospitality industry. This knowledge of drinks and drink production led them to take a step into producing a truly small-batch range of gins of great flavour while also being as sustainable as possible. The bottles are made at Allied Glass in Leeds, colour coated in Riccall (only 10 miles away from this very shop) and then filled back in Leeds. The beautiful corks are hand engraved by an artist five miles up the road from the Dinnewells home, and even the bottle seal is made from recycled wood pulp.

That's all well and good, but what REALLY matters in the liquid inside the frankly gorgeous bottles - which reference Yorkshire, the Dinnewell family (including their two children) and even their own wedding.

Old Tom gins date back to Victorian times where gins were slightly sweetened with a sugar solution to make them more palatable, which was necessary considering some of the decidedly dodgy production methods that would go on at the time. In this case, the spirit is sweetened with a homemade orange and ginger syrup, accenutating the fruity notes produced by distilling with dried orange and vanilla.

The orange notes are beautifully fresh, and the ginger is nicely in the background - sometimes ginger can be overpowering but absolutely not in this case. It's not TOO sweet either, providing great balance instead. A soft tonic will work, as will ginger ale - as you might expect! But it's also quite interesting in the form of a Gin Old Fashioned, with a touch of maple syrup and some orange bitters...