Harry Potter meets hard liquor: welcome to Sidmouth's new Gin School

By Hannah Corfield

9th Feb 2020 | Local News

Sidmouth Gin School will officially open for bookings following a highly successful trial evening, which took place on Friday (February 7).

Owners of the The Dairy Shop, on Church Street, have been making Sidmouth-inspired gin and vodka for over a year now, always with the ambition of opening a school.

Nub News attended the event and spoke to John Hammond, who runs The Dairy Shop and Sidmouth Gin, together with his family.

He explained: "We've been wanting to do this for a while now, but we had to get our own still up and running first.

"We have four stills currently in operation - this evening being the first time we've tried having them all going at the same time, so it's a case of figuring out the logistics.

"It's going really well!"

People who attend Sidmouth Gin School are educated on the gin making process and provided with an ingredients list, which they select from.

The flavours on offer are a delightful and varied mix; with grains of paradise, nasturtium, violet and saffron to name but a few!

Participants are also required to invent a name for their creation - one on the night being 'Ginius' - and to design a label for the bottle.

John adds: "The other lovely thing here is that if people come and create a gin they're really happy with and fancy more of it, we can replicate their recipe for them - so they are able to restock with their own bespoke gin."

Recently the store announced that they have been selected as finalists for the Exeter Living Awards 2020.

John said: "We're really excited to have two nominations - one for the café and one for Sidmouth Gin.

"For us, it's not just about being a good café it's about everything else that we do.

"We are actively part of the community; we do a lot with the Food Bank, we took kids away to Moldova through the Church, we run craft events here and a youth café providing support for young carers."

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