Lincs Pride FEB 223.qxp 05/01/2021 10:54 Page 59
THE GENTLEMEN DISTILLERS
Lift Your
SPIRIT If you’re looking for something to lift your spirit this winter, Bandsman and Bandmaster will be music to your ears. The creation of Lincoln’s James Wood, this sublime duo of gins feature a range of botanicals that are perfectly in tune with what an aficionado loves… Words: Rob Davis.
COMEDY and the creation of a really good tipple have something in common: timing. During our visit, James Wood’s chubby stainless-steel vessel, Bertha, is currently full of 1,000 litres of some of the finest gin you’re ever likely enjoy. But not yet. First, it has to rest for about a month to let the botanicals really stretch their legs and pervade perfuse and permeate the neutral grain spirit in which they rest. It’s time well invested, unlike three years spent at university, it seems. Speaking of comedy, James was given an irritatingly trenchant, though slightly amusing, lesson about crap timing when he completed his degree in European Studies in 2016 – hoping to pursue a career in the civil service – just before the country experienced collective delirium and decided to vote for Brexit.
was to create a product, one that he could be proud of, one that people could enjoy. Something like… “Trial and error,” says James. “I enjoy spirits, rather than real ale or wine, and though I like whisky, that’s a product which typically takes five to eight years in casks to mature. A vodka or gin-based product could be brought to market faster and gin is a spirit that provides the potential for great versatility.” “There are many flavoured gins on the market, some of which work better than others. Gin, I knew, would provide creative scope after I’d mastered the mastery of an ability to produce a really good halo product on which to base future products.”
Bang goes that career, so all that was left was to clear off down the pub. So he did.
James’s trial and error saw him experimenting with different flavours and gradually developing a canny sense of what will and won’t work in the context of his method of gin production, known as compounding.
And whilst there, enjoying a gin and tonic with his old University chum, contemplating alternative careers, James deduced that his ideal career
His eureka moment came with the hunch that the oleic qualities of tomato and basil would work well alongside a few other botanicals. >> 59
