GOLDEN FORK FROM THE NORTH OF ENGLAND Nick Wadeson has taken inspiration from his mother’s baking to serve up a classic pudding – in a glass
THE BOUTIQUE GIN market is a crowded space, but Cheshire distillery Three Wrens has come up with something that no-one else is making, by using the ingredients of a traditional British pudding as its key botanicals.
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I AM CONSTANTLY EXPERIMENTING WITH FLAVOURS AND HOW THEY PASS THROUGH THE DISTILLATION PROCESS.
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“Ours is the only apple crumble gin currently available on the market. It sits alongside our world-first Bison Grass Edition as the best-selling gin in our range,” says Nick Wadeson, who founded Three Wrens in 2019 after a career in the cocktails and spirits industry. “I think this is because of the spirit’s quality and the fact it is unusual and can’t be found anywhere else.” But that’s not to say the concept of making gin with oats, apples and cinnamon
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is new. According to Nick, these simple ingredients have long been deployed. “Oats, apples and cinnamon have been used in gin for over 200 years. We just found a new and innovative way to use them.” Three Wrens toasts the oats and steeps them in the spirit, which is then distilled with juniper, cinnamon, nutmeg and sweet orange. It then passes through a vapour basket packed with dried apple slices to extract the flavour from the fruit. “The apples are sourced from nearby orchards, and preserved in-house to last us throughout the year,” explains Nick. He says it takes patience to make, as each small batch takes three days, but the warming liquor that ensues is worth the wait. The gin has an intriguing nose, with piney juniper, rich toasted oats and crisp apple. The first sip has lots of depth with buttery notes and baked apple, while the finish is long, with subtle cinnamon and gentle spice. Three Wrens distills its gin in two copper stills – ‘Valerie’ and ‘Jill’ – in batches of 300 and 50 litres respectively. The stills are named after Nick’s mother, whose apple crumble inspired this flavour. “I am constantly experimenting with flavours and how they pass through the distillation process,” he says. “After enjoying mum’s dessert, it started me wondering if we could use the ingredients in a gin, while preserving its soul of juniper.” Valerie and Jill will soon be on the move, along with the rest of the team, into a new, larger distillery five miles down the road in Combermere. “We will have greater capacity for tastings, a big botanicals wall for visitors to choose from when distilling their own gin, and of course, a cocktail bar,” says Nick. www.threewrensgin.com
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