A small coastal town is an unlikely place for one of the world’s most fearsome monsters to make landfall – but Whitby, a beautiful little outpost on the Yorkshire coast, is where Count Dracula first set foot in the UK. Find out how this tale, and the seaside idyll in which it’s set, inspired a pair of distillers to create a deliciously dark spirit exclusively for our members and their October 2020 Gin of the Month box.
Here’s the story behind our October 2020 Gin of the Month, Whitby Gin The Demeter Edition!
Find Whitby Gin The Original Edition, Whitby Gin Wild Old Tom Edition and Whitby Gin Bramble & Bay Edition on our online shop by following the links!
Whitby Gin The Demeter Edition
A Craft Gin Club Exclusive!
Distilled in Yorkshire, England.
42% ABV
Botanicals:
Juniper, plum, heather tip, pepper dulse, coriander, angelica root, liquorice root, cassia bark, orris root, lemon, orange, rosehip, hibiscus, cardamom, elderflower, pink pepper and vanilla.
Tasting Notes:
This gin is rich, heady and juniper-forward, with a slight bite. It’s fragrant on the nose, led by the heather tip, rosehip and elderflower. On the palate, sweet notes of plum and vanilla are followed by a kick of pepper dulse, with its powerful, coastal flavours which fade into a pleasantly spiced finish.
The Spirit of the Night
Whitby Gin distillers Luke Pentith and Jessica Slater
Many years ago, so the story goes, the oppressive stillness of a summer’s day in Whitby was broken by a sudden storm. Roaring waves, thunderous wind and monstrous lightning appeared. Masses of ghostly sea fog rolled into the harbour and along with it came the Demeter – a ship that locals were shocked to see had the corpse of its captain attached to its helm. From the vessel, an immense black dog leapt ashore and dashed up the cliff to the graveyard above, before disappearing into the darkness of the moorlands.
According to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is how Count Dracula, under the guise of a beast, first set foot on British soil. For Whitby Gin distillers Luke Pentith and Jessica Slater, their hometown is a natural setting for one of the world’s greatest tales. Nowhere in the world compares to Whitby, a remote town on the coast of Yorkshire.
“For me, Whitby is one of the most enchanting towns in the whole country. It’s always been a place that attracts adventurers, wanderers and smugglers.”
From Bram Stoker to Captain Cook, not to mention the goths that descend twice a year for the Whitby Goth Weekend festival, this sleepy seaside town has captured the imagination of many an unusual character. Held on one side by the sea and the other by heathered moorlands, it boasts ancient churches and graveyards, rich folklore and a fossil-strewn coast. No wonder it's a town steeped in intrigue.
A Tale of Two Gin Lovers
Although Jess had grown up in Whitby and Luke was from the nearby city of York, the two met miles away when they were both students at Loughborough University.
The two got chatting, and while Jess’s studies whisked her away to Canada and China, when she returned home fate brought them back together. The next time they met was in the famous Magpie Fish and Chips restaurant, where she worked during her summer holidays, and the two have been together ever since.
Luke and Jess foraging on the moors
They spent the next few years exploring different career paths, and although their different adventures took them up and down the country, they stuck together and found in each other kindred spirits. Both share a keen sense of curiosity – especially when it comes to their favourite tipple.
“Gin was always my go-to drink at university – though I wouldn’t say what I was drinking was necessarily any good! It was around seven years ago that we started to take a real interest in spirits, partly because of their capacity to tell the story of a place.”
In 2017 the two of them set off to the Scotland and the Hebrides.
“It was full of distilleries, and we couldn’t help but ask ourselves why Whitby didn’t have its own spirit.”
Whitby is a place full of history, legends and remarkable people – and the more they thought about it, the more telling the stories of Whitby through gin made sense.
“We just got carried away with the idea, really. By the time we were on the ferry back from the Hebrides, we’d designed a five-year business plan and ordered a small still, and Jess had already sketched the bottle!”
Whitby Abbey looks out to sea
The Dawn of a New Gin
“For the next few months, we just lived and breathed gin. We weren’t distillers yet and we knew we had a lot to learn. We spent that time reading everything we could get our hands on and visiting all the distilleries we could.”
The small still that Jess and Luke had ordered would create one bottle of gin at a time – and it didn’t take them long to begin experimenting. Their friends and families were roped into tasting sessions that would go on late into the night, as Jess and Luke tried out distilling different botanicals from around Whitby.
“Then there was one night when we were drinking with our friends and we were like… this is it. We’d found exactly what we were looking for, that elusive taste we were trying to achieve. That was a really rewarding moment.”
Working out of a 40 sq-foot utility room in Luke’s parents’ house, they created their first-ever batch of Whitby Gin. When they released it into the world, they weren’t quite sure what to expect but hoped that a few visitors to Whitby would take a bottle away with them when they left, as a souvenir of the coastal town.
But just like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Whitby Gin took on a life of its own. It began as a local favourite, but soon folks from all over the country had developed a taste for the stuff. For a good number of gin enthusiasts, it became their forever gin – the one they always have a bottle of on their shelves.
The support from their local community gave Jess and Luke the courage to enter their gin into competitions. They began sweeping up golds and silvers across the country, but one experience, in particular, emboldened them.
“We won the award for best British London Dry in 2019 at the World Gin Awards. That was a really amazing experience. When they announced it, I couldn’t quite get my head around it.”
Jess and Luke harvesting heather for distillation
“It gave us the confidence we needed to go on and develop new gins.”
They ended up creating a whole range of gins – including the exclusive bottle you unboxed this October.
A Ship in a Bottle
It had been a novel that had first brought Jess and Luke together, and when they set about creating a bespoke gin for Craft Gin Club members, they decided to tell another literary story.
“We like to tell the stories of different people from Whitby with our gins, and even though he is fictional, Dracula is one of the most interesting figures from the town’s history. To this day, he’s everywhere in the town, lurking behind every corner. The story has shaped Whitby into the place it is now.”
Once Jess and Luke had settled on creating a spirit inspired by the famous vampire, they began doing their research, hunting for the perfect name for their gin.
“We reread the book and we watched the BBC adaptation. The Demeter is the iconic ship that brought Dracula across the sea to the UK, before he bounded off into Whitby in the guise of a black dog. We love that part of the story and the imagery around it – it’s a really intriguing introduction to Whitby.”
Much of Bram Stoker’s novel is told through the medium of letters, and a whole section of it is told through the Demeter’s logs. Dracula boards the Demeter in Varna, Bulgaria, with coffins filled with Transylvanian soil. Members of the crew gradually begin disappearing, victims of the vampire on board. By the time the ship reaches Whitby, only Dracula remains, and he escapes to the moors in the form of a dog, ready to wreak havoc on the windswept town of Whitby. For Jess and Luke, the iconic ship seemed like the perfect namesake for their gin.
Whitby Abbey at night
Fiendish Botanicals
Once they’d settled on the name, it was time to create their bespoke blend. Juniper, of course, would take centre stage, but they had three other botanicals in mind: heather, plum and pepper dulse.
To begin with, they wanted to capture the herbaceous yet floral aroma of the heather surrounding Whitby. Jess and Luke imagined the walks Bram Stoker must have taken on Whitby’s moorlands, and wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“We pick all the heather ourselves, starting in August. We work with the North York Moors Authority to see what heather is going to be burned away to allow the fresh stuff to grow through, and then we harvest it.”
To complement the flavours of heather, they added a mixture of dried and fresh black plums to their botanical blend. Not only does their depth of fruity flavours make for a delicious gin, but plums are also a favourite food amongst bats – one of the many animals into which Dracula could transform. Plus, these autumnal fruits are said to grow in abundance around Bran Castle, which served as the inspiration for Dracula’s castle in the novel.
Meanwhile, the rich umami flavour of pepper dulse, sometimes called the truffle of the sea, offers a fascinating and delicious contrast to the subtle sweetness of plum. This type of seaweed, which Jess and Luke source from the local company SeaGrown, really captures the scent of the waves crashing against the piers of Whitby.
Along with 14 other botanicals, including the likes of vanilla and rosehip, they had their recipe at last – rich, fragrant and full of heady flavours. They ordered a brand-new copper still from Germany and named it Dora-Grace, after Dora Walker, the first-ever female fishing boat skipper in Whitby.
Once Dora-Grace had transformed the botanicals into October’s exquisite Gin of the Month, there was just one thing left to do: bottle the spirit of Dracula and send it straight to every Craft Gin Clubber’s door.
Dora-Grace at work
Second Chapters
Jess and Luke’s story with gin is far from over – in fact, it’s just beginning. Just like Dracula’s quest to find a new home in England, this pair of distillers are also ready to set up shop in a new spot – though their intentions are far less malevolent. They simply need a place to continue telling the stories of Whitby through the gins they create.
They’ve come a long way since they made their first batch of gin in Luke’s parents’ utility room, and now work out of a 635 sq-foot cart shed, but they’re still in the process of creating their forever home.
They had looked at several places in Whitby, including an old fudge factory, but nothing seemed to fit. Then one fateful day, while working with English Heritage at Whitby Abbey, Jess and Luke noticed two derelict barns a stone’s throw away. They immediately felt drawn to them, and after exploring them further, realised they would be the perfect spot to create their dream distillery.
“It’s the most amazing setting you could imagine. We’ve been to a lot of distilleries, and we just don’t think there is anything like it.”
Of course, the historic significance of its location cannot be understated. The skeletal ruins of Whitby Abbey, which was first built over 1,500 years ago, have been inspiring artists and poets for hundreds of years. The stories that have cropped up around the Abbey form the foundation of Whitby’s local lore.
Not to mention, Jess and Luke will have the space to make their dreams come true.
“We’d love to have a visitor centre, a whole distillery experience and even be able to hold small weddings.”
Most importantly, Jess and Luke will be able to achieve one of the dreams they hold most dear: they’ll create a distillery devoted to sustainability and protecting the environment. The two of them love the natural world that makes Whitby such a wonderful place to live and distil gin, and they want to do everything they can to preserve its beauty.
The beautiful seaside town of Whitby
“The new site will really enable us to fulfil our aims in terms of sustainability. We’d love to create green living roofs which can be a home for lots of plants and insects, complete with solar panels hidden from view that will partly power the distillery. The heat from the still will be captured to heat the building, and once the botanicals have been used to make gin, they will be dried and used as biofuel. We’re also excited to plant lots of botanicals on site.”
While Luke and Jess often borrow inspiration from Whitby’s rich past, they’re excited to be part of its future. Through the beautiful bottle in October’s box, they’ve revived a long-dead vampire, and once they create their eco-friendly distillery, they’ll breathe fresh life into more fascinating tales from Whitby’s history.
Message in a Bottle
Check out the details on this extra-special bottle:
The texture of the glass reflects the rippling waves of the wild sea, climbing up the neck of the bottle like waves crashing against Whitby’s cliffs.
The cork, made of lovely dark wood, pays tribute to the ship-building industry in Whitby.
The shape of the bottle mimics the buoys you see hanging from the fishing boats in Whitby harbour.
The label’s purple colour reflects the plums that give the liquid its rich, fruity flavours, while the swirls capture the tempestuous waves of the sea.
The bottom of the bottle is shaped like an ammonite – that is, one of the fossils that you’d find on the Whitby coastline. According to legend, they’re actually serpents turned to stone by St Hilda, the 7th-century abbess of Whitby. This story began Whitby’s legacy as a place with supernatural possibilities.
Whitby Gin The Demeter Edition
Find out what accompanied this fantastic gin in our October 2020 Gin of the Month box!
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