Cambridge Distillery Co
We all had lockdown projects that kept us sane, but not everyone has been able to make the transition into an award-winning boutique business. But Olympic-gold-medal winning coach James Coote presumably has discipline in droves. We knocked on his distillery door to learn more about his craft.
No sooner were we welcomed into the Cambridge Distillery tasting room, as the glassware comes out and the ice chimes into our glasses, when a tradie dips into the tasting room on Alpha Street in Cambridge. He’s sorry to interrupt, but his wife was here just the other day for a tasting for work, and left with one of Cootes’ strawberry soaked pink gins (the grunge-y, embossed label of which looks like a Garbage album from the 90s). Uncapped, it leaked a little through his van, the smell of which isn’t unpleasant - he’s quite happy with that bit - but he needs another for the Missus. “They had a really great time, aye.” He leaves a happy customer, promising to be back.
Gin’s a broad church - there’s the Dylan Morran joke about how gin “isn’t really a drink, it’s more of the mascara thinner,” or Snoop Dogg lyrics (Rollin' down the street, smokin' endo, sippin' on gin and juice). Our household’s lockdown project: watching M*A*S*H where Hawkeye Pierce's still has the status of a cast member. Because, after all, gin is medicinal - Winston Churchill once said that gin and tonic has “saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.”
Which brings us to probably its strongest association. Gin is WASPy; pastoral English village scenes; day three of a cricket test match on the village green. In which case, how had we not noticed that Cambridge is, really, the quintessential gin town? (Although don’t be fooled, the name Knocknaveagh was the name of an old family farm in County Cavan, in Ireland.)
And gin’s fundamental botanical nature makes the perfect canvas on which to imprint the region’s flavours, which James and his business partner Will (pus we get the sense, family and friends) source and forage from around the region.The original flagship Knocknaveagh Cambridge Dry features Fir Douglas pinched from all around town. The 1862 Dry Gin was taken from a recipe found in an antique store, updated with local ingredients. As the line expanded, the London Dry Gin, the house gin at Mr Pickles, won gold at the Australian Gin Awards in 2023. One of the more recent additions is a limoncello, a drink receiving a revival at the moment thanks to the tiktok nonnas, with their little tiktok grandchildren copying their every home recipe, is made from local lemons at his inlaws property, where they grow, apparently, not lemons but the platonic ideal of lemons (“the exact lemon you would draw if you were asked to draw a lemon”). You’ll also find various members of this range served at The Green, on the shelves at Neat, and was a go-to at the now defunct Ernest (which we spend a moment lamenting, before Cootes says, ‘yeah, but we would have liked it if they’d paid their bill first”.) The latest tincture is inspired by the Tuscan sun, soaked in after a celebratory hiatus after his goal-medal winning campaign in Paris.
“If I’ve done it right, the gin should have something to say,” he says. “It doesn’t always have to be great. But I do want to prod people.”
There aren’t as many barriers as you would expect, he says, in taking your boutique booze operation commercial. The biggest barrier, one imagines, is probably splitting his time with his highly successful coaching career.
Out the back of the tasting room is the still, and buckets of booze sit around on the shelves, soaking in various seeds, herbs, and fruits. This is the full operation, and labels hanging off a reel, with the wax pots overlooking the back lawn. Sometimes his daughter, Charlotte, will do a stint stamping the “C” on top of the wax seal (taking some time to realise it didn’t, in fact, stand for her own name). When he first starting playing around, in between lock downs and coaching (you can read this excellent article here, including his enlightened comments on coaching high performance women’s sport, with athletes who are also parenting toddlers, here), from the get-go he made bottles with proper labels, down to the percentage and the pregnancy-warning labels. Even though at that stage it was going to family and friends.
Like most things that happened in lockdown, it’s difficult to imagine the outfit only started out between two to three years ago. But when you distill the unmistakable local flavours, infuse it with local passion and expertise, and execute it with the discipline of an Olympian, what you get is a damn fine gin that couldn’t be made anywhere else.
The tasting room (open Saturdays and Sundays 12 - 4.30pm), or by appointment, at 92 Alpha Street in Cambridge.
Freezer door martini
Our latest obsession is the freezer door cocktail. It’s a pre-batched cocktail: all the convenience of a bullshit RTD, but with the exact, say, gin that you like, ready to go out of your freezer door. It’s perfect for hosting, because you’re not Wonderhorse and you don’t have time to make everyone’s drinks lovingly one by one.
Important things. It's not just a matter of scaling up your favourite cocktail. It suits boozey, stirred cocktails - get a bottle of your favourite base with about 40% alcohol (your gins, vodkas, whiskeys, tequilas or rums), pour out no more than a fifth, and then add the various other ingredients. If you’re used to paying someone else to make your cocktails for you: they have more water in them than you think. You’re replacing the process by which you would stir or shake the cocktail with ice regardless of whether it’s actually served with any - which adds some water (or namely dilution) to open up the flavour of the alcohol. In the freezer-door cocktail, you add water up front (because you’re doing just about everything up front because otherwise its cheating), to compensate for this. But add too much water (or other ingredients), and it will no longer liquid in your freezer. Which is bad. This is where cocktail nerds on reddit like to thrash out their methods.
Plus other quirks, like bitters not necessarily scaling up in the same way. Don't forget sugar - as this article points out, you should stop thinking of sugar as being a sweetener and start thinking about it as a texturising agent, and carrying flavour like the fat does in regular cooking.
The drawback is that the colder temperatures can dull flavour - so don’t be afraid to rest it before your serve, and all of it can be drawn out into a highball, of course.
And it suits drinks that are best served really, really cold, obviously - like a martini. Old fashioneds, manhattans or, of course, negronis.
Recipe
by the Waikato Draft
Knocknaveagh London Dry - pour out 200ml
Add
100ml of Mancino Secco Vermouth, or your favourite dry vermouth
80ml of water
15ml - 30ml of olive brine - which you can either add now or when serving
2ml of orange bitters
Combine, shake and stash in your freezer door. Pour into a cocktail glass with olive garnish to serve.
