I recently had an opportunity to take a trip to London, and then to Plymouth England to tour the Plymouth distillery. I figure that the trip presented a wealth of data to "blog" about, so I don’t have any excuse not to get off my duff and actually record various aspects of this visit.
Instead of just blasting away and doing a brain-dump of the entire trip in one entry, I’ll take a more leisurely approach and provide various details and stories about the trip in a collection of posts. If nothing else it will make my blog seem a little more active then it has for a while.
So here I’ll just provide a very quick overview.
As many of you hopefully know, Plymouth gin is having a bit of a researgence these days. They’ve come back from being almost extinct, to now outselling Bombay Sapphire and Beefeater in the UK. They got there start back in 1793, and grew in reputation, and by the time Prohibition hit us here in the states, they were one of the most famous gins in the world.
But between Prohibition here in the sates, followed almost immediately by the war in Europe (during which the distillery was bombed), times turned very hard. Switching hands several times, and being bought out by companies who weren’t at all interested in the the brand or the product, resulted in driving sales down even further, as well as taking massive shortcuts which resulted in an inferior product.
Then in 1996 the brand was bought out by a group of private investors, led by John Murphy, who had faith in the product as well as the brand, and worked at turning the company around. When it was bought out, sales were at an all-time low of 5000 cases annually.
First the product was restored to it’s original level of quality, and by 1999 UK sales tripled, and exports increased eight fold.
They have continued to boost production, as well as carefully market their product to maintain its perception as a permium gin.
Part of this marketing is to make sure that the right people get to know as much about the product as possible, which is where I come in. I, along with a dozen or so bartenders, food writers, and mixologists across the country were invited for a visit to get some first hand knowledge about Plymouth Gin.
The trip was absolutely wonderful. I’ve always been a big fan of Plymouth Gin, and it was really enjoyable to get a first hand look at their process and talk with the people actually making the product.
In the posts that will follow, I’ll touch upon as many of the little details about this trip as I think are worth your time to read about. Some of them may not have any direct connection with Plymouth Gin at all, but they were part of the overall experience.
-Robert
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