New Lancaster distillery’s debut gin scoops international award

Chaired by The Spirits Business and a panel of leading spirit specialists, The Gin Masters is a blind-tasting competition judged by some of the finest palates in the industry, including leading distributors, educators and on-trade professionals.

Due to the popularity of the category, The Gin Masters competition is now held twice a year to find and reward the best gin brands on the world stage. In the first instalment, judged in June, more than 500 products were put to the taste test.

November’s second instalment saw the panel work through around 125 bottlings, across 13 categories, including London Dry, Old Tom, Pink Gin, Flavoured Gin and Super Premium, with Firecracker collecting its Silver Medal in this category. During the judging process each entry is marked on appearance, aroma, palate, and overall balance.

Gerard Evans, the consultant distiller at the Lancaster Spirits Co, said: “I am over the moon that we’ve received our first award for our Firecracker Gin.

"It’s the first gin in our core range, which we’ve created completely from scratch, using a secret blend of wheat and rye grains, our 200-year-old Lancastrian live yeast and water drawn from our own artesian well.

"The award-winning spirit we’ve created reflects our proud local heritage and displays a uniquely complex flavour profile, making it a great option for a gin & tonic.’’

Phil Simpson, founder of the Lancaster Spirits Company, said: “It’s great news that our premium Firecracker Gin has been formally recognised as being a gin of high quality with an excellent flavour profile with a Silver Medal at the Global Spirit Masters 2022, and now sits alongside gins of national and international renown. It’s a testament to every member of the team and their hard work over the past 18 months since we established the distillery. Working with them to create an original range of premium grain to glass spirits led by our Firecracker and our English Grain Vodka has been incredible.”

Housed alongside the home of multi-award-winning Lancaster Brewery, The Lancaster Spirits Company is a grain to glass distillery, utilising decades of brewing know-how and a painstaking distilling process, to produce premium quality, small-batch gin and vodka.

The distillery has taken an exceptionally unusual and challenging approach to creating their own base grain spirit, by distilling from their own specially concocted beer.

The bottle design is based on a 19th Century Lancasterbased brewery (Yates & Jackson) beer bottle and then carefully modified to allow space for the label and etched with the distillery's name.

To produce a single drop of The Lancaster Spirits Company gin or vodka takes a minimum of five weeks of work.

This unique "Batch 001" release can be enjoyed now or saved as a collector's edition and is available to order online at https://lancasterspirits.co.uk

Firecracker Gin has a 40% ABV and is available in 70cl bottles at a price of £38 and 50cl bottles at £29.