‘Fish oils and putty,’ says Terry Fraser approvingly as he sniffs a freshly distilled sample of Livorno juniper, while the ‘grated carrot’ and ‘mothballs’ emanating from another glass guarantees its rejection. I meet Fraser in the lab of the normally off-limits Cameronbridge distillery at Windygates, Fife. He is custodian of the 249-year-old recipe for Gordon’s gin, the first ‘London dry’, juniper-led style developed by a Londoner of Scottish descent. With more demand for his spirit, Fraser is undertaking the firm’s biggest ever botanical buying season — but only 10 per cent of juniper will make the cut. ‘With one sniff, you know a good sample,’ he says.
We enter the botanicals house filled with coriander seeds, angelica, orris root, liquorice and, in former coffee sacks, juniper berries — their flavours concentrated by 18 months of maturation. Fraser met pickers in Italy — ‘retirees supplement their pensions by picking wild juniper which they take home and sift.’ Fraser splits, rubs and smells a berry. ‘That’s Gordon’s,’ he nods. ‘Sometimes I won’t put the lights on, just smell the aromas here before going to the still house.’
I learn just one modest-looking still quenches Europe’s thirst for Gordon’s, its gleaming coils gradually heating batches of botanicals 24 hours a day, with the sweet seasoning of liquorice added last by hand.
Fraser always had a keen sense of smell. As a teenager, he likened the cooked wheat scents wafting from Cameronbridge towards the football field to ‘corned beef’. During his first job in whisky, ‘fantastic mentors’ spotted his talent, progressing him to the nosing panel by the age of 18. ‘When I see Gordon’s in a bar I get emotional,’ he says, ‘because I know how much work goes on under my watch.’
