The best UK gin experiences

Best gin experiences and holidays

Ramsbury Estate, Wiltshire

• From £130 per night including breakfast, check availability at thebellramsbury.com or booking.com

Stretching across nearly 20,000 acres of prime Wiltshire, Berkshire and Hampshire land, the Ramsbury Estate aspires to have no negative impact on its surroundings. That means making single-estate gin (and vodka) using their own wheat and barley, water from a private, chalk-filtered source, and home-grown quince for a signature flavour. As well as the distillery (which offers tours), there’s an on-site smokehouse (used to cold-smoke wild venison and chalk-stream trout) and a 300-year-old coaching inn, The Bell.

What to eat: The kitchen at The Bell serves Ramsbury meat, fish (try the Ramsbury gin-cured salmon), vegetables, fruit and even estate-produced honey. Sunday might include the likes of pigeon crown, pearl barley, Ramsbury estate baby carrots & red wine jus.

What to drink: A grassy, floral spirit made ever-so-slightly spicy with a touch of cinnamon, Try Ramsbury Estate Gin in a G&T with a slice of green apple and a wedge of lime.

Where to stay: Book one of the nine cossetting bedrooms above the inn or in the renovated coach house.

From £130 per night including breakfast, check availability at thebellramsbury.com or booking.com

Bombay Sapphire Distillery, Hampshire

• The Pheasant Inn from £115 per night, including breakfast, check availability at thepheasant-inn.co.uk, booking.com or mrandmrssmith.com

Hidden deep in the rolling Hampshire countryside, among the picture-perfect flint and thatch cottages of Whitchurch, you’ll find Laverstock Mill. With a history dating back to the Domesday book, this was once a working mill making the paper for banknotes, but now, this complex of beautiful red-brick Grade II listed buildings is home to Bombay Sapphire.

Wander across the courtyard from the glasshouses, and you can really immerse yourself in the botanical room, where you’re encouraged to touch, smell and taste the carefully-sourced botanicals, before going through to the still room and seeing the process in action. You can also try your hands at mixology with a gin cocktail masterclass where you'll learn how to make two different cocktails.

Distillery tour tickets: Bombay Sapphire Distillery Discovery Tour with Cocktail for Two, Virgin Experience Days, £40

What to eat: Make a weekend of it by booking into horse-racing haunt turned local gastro pub The Pheasant Inn, about a 30-minute drive away, where pub classics (Pheasant Ale-battered fish and chips, beef burgers, chicken kiev) sit on the menu alongside more unusual seafood dishes.

What to drink: Try your hands at mixology in the distillery with a gin cocktail masterclass where you'll learn how to make two different cocktails while sipping on a martini.

Where to stay: Choose from 11 individually styled rooms at the Pheasant.

The Pheasant Inn from £115 per night, including breakfast, check availability at thepheasant-inn.co.uk, booking.com or mrandmrssmith.com

Rosewood London, WC1 (City)

• From £442 per night, check availability at rosewoodhotels.com or booking.com

The copper-topped gin bar at Holborn Dining Room, part of the Rosewood London hotel is one of the most impressive we’ve seen; it’s stocked with 500 gins, 30 tonics and 14,000 possible G&T pairings to choose from. You’ll need a couple of days to sample just a tiny fraction of that hefty collection.

What to eat: Acclaimed chef Calum Franklin's refined seasonal, British fare is a must-try: think dishes such as gin-cured salmon with Guinness soda bread; 50-day-aged Cornish rare breed sirloin with béarnaise sauce and Pump Street Chocolate and orange tart.

What t0 drink: Try HDP's own gin, created in collaboration with Cornish distillery Tarquin's. It's a classic juniper-led London Dry gin, with botanicals of rock samphire, coriander and lemon.

Where to stay: Rosewood's sleek, plush rooms make for a perfect bolthole if you're planning a city break in London. If you're looking to splash out, book one of their luxury suites with a personalised butler service.

From £442 per night, check availability at rosewoodhotels.com or booking.com

Kingsland Locke, Dalston

• From £140 per night, check availability at lockeliving.com or booking.com

This affordable lifestyle hotel in edgy Dalston – an area well served by restaurants and nightlife – has its own sustainably managed microbrewery and gin distillery. Jim & Tonic’s gin distillery – based on the principles of “reduce, reuse and regenerate” – produces four punchy gins, and the cocktail game is strong here, too.

What to eat: The restaurant and bar, Kraft Dalston, is the east London outpost of Le Bab and features full- and slider-sized kebabs cooked on a wood-fired robata and served with sourdough flatbreads. The low-and-slow pork shawarma kebab sees organic free-range pork cooked for 15 hours and served with sweet pickled cucumber, chermoula mayo and a foraged herb mix; a meaty lamb ‘madras’ kebab comes with balti mix and madras yogurt; and the vegetarian paneer kebab is spiced and served on a beetroot and coconut purée with pickled cucumber, crispy onions, curry mayo and coriander. There are also limited-edition kebab specials, snacks and meze dishes, such as the meat butter naan topped with za’atar and hummus, peanut curry pesto and lemon.

Where to drink: A bottle of Jim & Tonic Kraft hopped grapefruit gin will brighten up your drinks cabinet.

Where to stay: The public areas include co-working spaces, and the apartment-style rooms have plush sofas and fully functioning kitchens, making it a cosy and buzzy hybrid of home and hotel.

From £140 per night, check availability at lockeliving.com or booking.com

Spirit of Masham, Yorkshire

• Grantley Hall from £500 per night, check availability at grantleyhall.co.uk, booking.com or mrandmrssmith.com

More and more distilleries are setting up their own ‘gin schools’ where visitors can learn how to distil their own bespoke spirit. One such spot is Spirit of Masham, in Yorkshire, which offers the chance to take over one of its copper stills and choose from 100 different botanicals to blend your own take on a London dry gin. Distillers will be on hand to offer advice on ingredients, and at the end of the three-hour experience you’ll have a 70cl bottle to take home.

What to drink: Try their unusual Chocolate Malt Barley gin, which uses chocolate malt barley, cocoa, coconut, rosehio and Italian coffee to create a grown up gin with delicious bitter chocolate notes.

Where to stay: Palatial country house hotel Grantley Hall includes everything from a luxury spa to manicured 30-acre parklands, and Michelin-starred dining courtesy of head chef Shaun Rankin.

From £500 per night, check availability at grantleyhall.co.uk, booking.com or mrandmrssmith.com

Salcombe Distilling Co, Devon

• Salcombe Harbour Hotel from £205 per night, check availability at harbourhotels.co.uk or booking.com

Down in Devon, Salcombe Distilling Co will help you craft a bespoke blend in your own individual copper still with all the citrus, herbal, floral and spice botanicals that they have to work with. The pros will give you an overview of how they make their gin, and teach you the ways to create a balanced and delicious sip. Then, you’ll bottle and label your creation before finishing the day in the distillery’s waterside bar to taste the final result and play around with different garnishes and tonics.

What to drink: Try the Marmajito – their take on a mojito – with Salcombe Gin, blood orange marmalade, lemon, mint and elderflower tonic.

Where to stay: Salcombe Harbour Hotel makes the most of a gorgeous waterfront location with gorgeous sea views and spacious rooms decked out in nautical shades and stripes.

From £205 per night, check availability at harbourhotels.co.uk or booking.com

The Henley Distillery, Henley-on-Thames

• Bottle & Glass Inn from £120 per night, check availability at bottleandglassinn.com

The Henley Distillery truly earns its ‘small batch’ and ‘hand crafted’ badges. A tour and tasting package provides a fascinating insight into how a small artisan distillery operates, with plenty of chances to try the gin, too. Currently housed in one large barn, the tour showcases the entire gin-making process from start to finish: beginning with the distillery’s traditional methods using copper stills, on to exploring the aromatics used to create each bottle, all the way through to bottling and packaging.

Both the passion for the craft and hands-on approach to producing top-quality gin are clear, with master distiller Jacob mixing each recipe in a small still to perfect the recipe first, before gradually scaling up. The traditional methods (no automated machinery here) are clearly working, with both the classic dry and rhubarb & orange gins winning top awards at the Spirits Masters just five months after launch.

What to drink: At the beginning of the tour (from £15) you’ll get a chance to sample each of three Henley Distillery own gins neat and then with a little tonic (to taste how the flavours transform) before picking your favourite and from a wide selection of mixers to make your ultimate G&T to sip during the tour.

What to eat: Stop off in Wallingford en route to the distillery for a meal at Five Little Pigs. Share a selection of the excellent small plates, from indulgent ‘Piggy pale rarebit’ to an outstanding scotch egg worth the trip alone. Don’t miss the signature dessert of a doughnut and creamy vanilla dipping custard.

Where to stay: The nearby Bottle & Glass Inn (just a 30-minute stroll through the surrounding fields) has three cosy rooms. Room 3 has a king-size bed and freestanding roll-top bath in the bedroom, plus an en suite shower wet room. Breakfast is included, including fresh pastries or a cooked breakfast using local produce.

Bottle & Glass Inn from £120 per night, check availability at bottleandglassinn.com

Wild Thyme Spirits, Isle of Colonsay

• From £1600 for four people, check availability at wildthymespirits.com

Rugged coastlines, unspoilt beaches and the chance to spot rare corncrakes await as you disembark the ferry at the remote Hebridean island of Colonsay, home to the Wild Thyme Spirits distillery. Book the latter’s Gin Lover’s Retreat (for groups of four) and you can settle in for a full-board weekend stay in their well-appointed lodge.

Make the most of Wild Thyme’s gin collection (200 bottles and counting, as well as their own Colonsay Gin, produced on the island), enjoy pre-dinner gin cocktails, a gin tasting and the chance to explore the island’s wild interior.

What to eat: Think robust, warming fare such as roast leg of lamb stuff studded with garlic and rosemary and served with dauphinoise potatoes, or ham hock butter with hot toast.

What to drink: Settle down in the evening with a snifter of their fruity bramble liqueur.

Where to stay: There's two comfortable double bedrooms and a shared lounge complete with wood-burning stove, jigsaws and board games.

From £1600 for four people, check availability at wildthymespirits.com

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