HALF HITCH Gin Micro-Distillery & Gin Store
Single-estate Malawian black tea hand-blended with Calabrian bergamot, which is Earl Grey taken apart and rebuilt as a gin.2
Why go
The botanicals are tea, bergamot, wood, hay and pepper on 100 per cent British grain spirit, and three methods pull them apart: copper pot distillation, vacuum distillation and tinctures made by hand.2 Running all three on one bottle is unusual at this size, and the reason given is that each botanical gives up its flavor differently.
The distillery works out of Camden Lock's old warehouse vaults, and it tells its own story about the ground. From 1869, by the distillery's account, Camden Lock was the center of London gin distilling and warehousing, twenty acres running from the Lock to the Roundhouse, with a daily express train carrying the gin out. Juniper Crescent is what is left of it on the street map. The name comes from the round turn and two half hitches used to moor barges along the Lock, and the rope marks are still cut into the stone walls and the iron bridges.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: the original bottling, and drink it the way the distillery says it built it, as a Twisted Martini: gin on the rocks with a twist of orange. The Earl Grey Tea and Pink Berry expressions are the other two.1
- Avoid: turning up expecting somewhere to sit. This is a still and a shop in a market yard.
Good to know
- Where: Unit 53, West Yard, Camden Lock Place NW1 8AF. The distillery's own pages name Camden Lock but do not print the unit, so that number comes from the saved pin.
- Gin school: book through the distillery.
- Shipping: the online store goes to mainland UK only.
- No award is printed here. The producer's copy says award-winning without naming a body, a category or a year, so this entry names none.
Verdict
could-visit — A gin built by taking Earl Grey apart: single-estate Malawian black tea hand-blended with Calabrian bergamot, alongside wood, hay and pepper, on 100 per cent British grain spirit. Three extraction methods run on the same botanicals, copper pot, vacuum still and hand-made tinctures, which is more work than most small distilleries put into one bottle. The distillery sits in the old warehouse vaults at Camden Lock and tells the story of the 20-acre gin trade that ran there from 1869 until the 1960s, which is its own account and worth hearing on the spot. Go for the still and the shop rather than for a drink, because there is no bar here. It stays mid-ladder because the producer is the only source: no critic, no award with a body and a year, and no founder named in anything reachable this pass.