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Five minutes with Angus Lugsdin, Salcombe Distilling Co

The inspiration for the project came about via our collaboration with Niepoort in 2018, when we developed a sloe and damson gin to pair with their Colheita 1996 tawny Port casks. At the time, we were visiting to select the port casks for the third release in our ultra-premium Voyager Series, which was inspired by my love of food and drink. I have been lucky enough to work with amazing Michelin-starred chefs and wanted to create a series of gins inspired by their own approaches.

I found myself nosing a cask of Niepoort’s sublime Moscatel do Douro, and I immediately started creating a recipe that I thought would marry to the residual aromas and flavours in the cask, which is a very different approach to most cask maturation.

• Read more: Five minutes with Sandro Gini

Essentially, we treat the cask as a botanical itself and tailor a recipe to marry to the cask to ensure balance and carefully tease out additional aromas and flavours. I have been particularly fascinated by the influence that wood has on spirits and as a general rule, ageing gin in casks doesn’t always work. But by nosing and selecting the casks first and then developing liquid tailored to the specific cask, we have found an approach that takes gin to a whole new level.

Salcombe Gin’s newest limited-edition, single cask release has spent just over 4.5 years in a Niepoort American oak cask that is almost 100 years old and still bears the original cooper’s mark. Just over 1,400 numbered 50cl bottles will be available via Fortnum & Mason (rrp £69.50).

• Gin
• Niepoort
• Salcombe Distilling
• cask aged spitis
• cask project