Gin-thusiasts will love the new Gin, Rum and Vodka Festival
High spirits are guaranteed at a new alcohol-focused festival in St Paul’s Church, Hills Road, on 15 March. The Gin, Rum and Vodka Festival will showcase ten craft distilleries from around the UK, including local distiller Saragusta Spirits, based in Buckden near St Neots.
The event is organised by The Gin to My Tonic, which began life as a social media blog in 2017. “We really hit the gin boom and created quite a following,” festival founder Paul Hudson-Jones tells us. “People wanted to know what gins and botanicals to try, how to achieve the ‘perfect serve’ and hear about funky new distillation techniques. So we decided we should build it into an event experience.”
The first UK tour began five years ago, but this is the first year Cambridge has been included. “Basically, it’s an in-person fair where we celebrate craft distillers. We’re letting customers sample spirits, hear the backstories and find out about the botanicals used in them. Although we built the business primarily around gin, there’s been a natural evolution towards other craft spirits – rum, whisky, vodka and now mezcal, tequila and agave-based spirits.”
The festival team works with about 110 craft distillers each year, many of whom are small-batch distilleries. “We’ve now got about 40 tour dates across the year, stretching from Aberdeen in Scotland to Falmouth in Cornwall and everywhere in between,” says Paul. “There’s some really good spirits coming out and it’s great to see the regional trends and all the different influences.”
Readers of Cambridge Edition can enjoy 20% off entrance to the festival using unique code NEWYEAR25
