Interview with Karl Bond, Forest Gin
Simon Keegan speaks to Karl Bond, co-founder of the UK's highest altitude distillery, Forest Gin
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00:00Hi there, so I've come up to the Forest Distillery at the Cat and Fiddle in
00:14Macclesfield. Let's take a tour. So Karl, thanks for welcoming me into the
00:21distillery. Let's take a look around, what can you show us in here?
00:25Yeah, we'll start in the bar. It's not the nicest of days, but it's nice and warm in here at least.
00:30This is the old Cat and Fiddle Inn, built 1813. This is where, if you book a
00:36distillery tour, you generally start your tour. We put you a nice seat by the fire,
00:40you can sit with friends, you can sit with family. We can get up to 30 people in here, but we do it really informal.
00:45You know, you come, you get a welcome gin and tonic or a whisky soda. We sit you in here, we give you a little bit of a history chart,
00:51a really light hide, and then we show you through to the distillery. Let's take a look around.
01:02Karl, tell us a little bit about the history of this place. So this place,
01:08we're on the main road between Macclesfield and Buxton. It's the highest
01:11point on the road. Back in those days, through history really, before the invention of the car,
01:18the only way between the two towns was to either walk or use your horse. So 1813, the landowner at
01:24the time, John Ryle, built this inn as the stopover point and you would have to stop here.
01:29You'd be knackered, basically, and you'd be in need of a drink and maybe somewhere to sleep.
01:33So they built a stabling, they built the inn, and over the years it's evolved as a much-loved country pub
01:39throughout the 1900s to a great place to bring your motorcycle or your car and race the hills
01:46in the 1980s up till the point where it closed because drink driving laws and various other
01:53things in the area. But sadly, as a pub, it failed and in 2015 they closed it. We got the keys
02:00in 2019 to turn it into the UK's highest altitude distillery. Should we take a look at the distillery?
02:07Yeah, let's go through. So what have we got here, Karl? These are our gin stills. So we started our
02:12business at home a few years ago now, making small batches of gin using pestles and mortar ingredients
02:18we picked from the local forest and we're distilling these. As the business got bigger, we've got more sales.
02:25And you're also making your whisky in here? Whisky behind you. Much bigger project, bigger kit needed.
02:31We've got a smell today, we've got some mash on the go.
02:36And this is officially Britain's highest altitude whisky distillery.
02:40So how much whisky will these hold? So it's a big old job, each of these is 2000 litres.
02:48But as we go through, eventually you get to a 500 litre still. Two weeks work, we'll make about 12
02:54barrels of whisky, which is not a lot in the scheme of things. It's a lot of work, a lot of effort.
03:00Can we see the whisky in its barrels? Yeah, of course, come down to the cellars.
03:05So here we're in the cellars now, where the whisky is maturing.
03:16So what have we got in here then? These are our oldest barrels, so some of these are from 2020.
03:22When we distill that whisky, two weeks to make, you've got to leave it for at least three years.
03:26So some of these are cognac wood, chlorosome wood, ex-American oak, puts all this flavour into them.
03:33So these just sit here now, and you wait for the wood to do its magic.
03:40So as we've got bigger, we make more and more of them, and these are the ones we're really going at
03:44at the minute. These are English oak, really unusual, from a sustainable woodland in Staffordshire.
03:49And we have these made specifically for us. So this is the first whisky that uses
03:54handmade English oak barrels, is it? I'm pretty certain on that, yes.
03:58Hopefully should put in a nice unique flavour, a little bit of prominence to it.
04:05And this barrel's been made bespoke for you, has it? It's not one that's had something else in it before?
04:11Exactly that, yeah. Brand new wood, it takes six months to dry out, made by hand, no screws, no nails,
04:19no glues, it's just wood and whisky.
04:22Fantastic, well Carl, thanks very much for showing us around.
04:24No worries, nice seeing you.