The UK boasts the most aristocratic gins in the world and the British gentry are turning to making super-premium gin to pay the bills. Many country estates and stately homes are now building their own distilleries and producing their own ‘high-end’ spirits.

An aerial view of Highclere Castle and the surrounding counrtryside.

As well as other lifestyle products, the Lennox family’s Gordon Castle, the ancient seat of the Gordon clan in Fochabers in the Spey Valley of Moray in Scotland, now produces its own tipples including plum gin liqueurs as well as a dry London gin.

Famous around the world as ‘the real Downton Abbey’, the location of the quintessentially English period drama, the 1679 Highclere Castle also offers its own award-winning gin made in England’s oldest distillery. The recipe was crafted over four years by American spirits entrepreneur Adam von Gootkin and the eighth Earl & Countess of Carnarvon. It uses estate-grown oats and botanicals from the castle’s herb gardens originally planted in the ninth century by the Bishops of Winchester.

It takes three days to distil the spirit and Langley uses copper pot stills, some of which date back to the early 1800s

“Highclere Castle has been renowned for its entertaining and house parties featuring gin cocktails through the years,” said Lady Carnarvon, the eighth Countess of Carnarvon and best-selling author of At Home at Highclere: Entertaining at the Real Downton Abbey.

“We, therefore, felt that with the ever-rising interest in gin, the family’s heritage and indeed the Carnarvon’s love of the spirit, that it was a natural step to make a gin from Highclere provenance.”

The custom deep-purple glass bottle is inspired by Highclere’s main town which was designed by architect Sir Charles Barry. The castle near Newbury on the Hampshire and Berkshire border also has an 18th-century Capability Brown park.

The Highclere dry London Gin in its deep-purple glass bottle.

Highclere Castle Gin is now available in 25 US states.

Co-founder and CEO of Highclere Castle Spirits, Adam von Gootkin, who hails from Hartford, Connecticut, and his wife were watching Downton Abbey and got inspired to reach out to the Carnarvons to see if they had ever consider producing gin. After a few e-mails back and forth, the couples met at Highclere and the Anglo-American distilling collaboration began.

The gin is made by sixth generation distiller Natalie Wallis at Langley Distillery in Birmingham. Its centuries-old underground wells still provide the necessary water for distillation. Langley produced its first gin in 1920.

It takes three days to distil the spirit and Langley uses copper pot stills, some of which date back to the early 1800s.

“We have five of varying sizes, all named after influential women in the company’s history,” Wallis says. 

“Highclere Castle’s Victorian-era orangery, with its exceptional citrus fruit, and the local oats add a depth and smoothness to the gin like no other. Highclere Castle is such an iconic British landmark; therefore, to capture the essence of the castle was so important to us. It’s been distilled by the discerning for the discerning.”