Last Updated on October 16, 2023
Learning to make gin in a historic castle
If you’ve ever wanted to create your own gin, then you need to visit the Castle at Edgehill, a lovely country pub in an 18th-century castle with incredible views of the Warwickshire countryside. The pub has recently teamed up with the award-winning Pinnock Distillery to open the Castle Gin School. We went there for their new Castle Experience, which includes a gin lesson and tasting in the tower plus dinner, an overnight stay and breakfast. It turned out to be a memorable visit and we got to go home proudly wielding our very own bottle of gin.
The Castle at Edgehill is a country pub and restaurant on the outskirts of Banbury that also offers bed and breakfast in its five comfortable ensuite rooms and suites. We immediately fell in love with the pub’s dramatic position overlooking the site of the Battle of Edge Hill which took place in 1642. The castle was built around 100 years later, some believe on the very spot Charles I raised his standard before the battle, and it first opened as a pub in 1822. We half expected Sealed Knot to appear in full costume and reenact the battle at some point during our stay.
We were given a warm welcome on arrival by the Castle’s friendly and helpful staff.
We were greeted in the pub by Dan Beckett and Nigel from Pinnock Distillery, who were to be our “gin teachers” for the day and led up 57 windy steps to the very top of the castle’s main tower. (This is not an activity for people who find stairs difficult.) Pinnock started life as a genuine cottage industry in 2018 in Dan’s cottage kitchen in a nearby village. Then, in February of this year, the distillery made the move to the castle’s larger tower which had been empty for 50 years. All the distilling of their award-winning gins is now done there as well as providing an atmospheric setting for their gin school and tastings.
We had signed up for the Ultimate Gin Experience, which includes the use of a mini copper still to distil a 70cl bottle of gin, sampling of the Pinnock gin range and three G+Ts. We were initially slightly daunted by the prospect of three hours of gin but we needn’t have worried. Dan and Nigel’s passion and knowledge kept us fully engaged and entertained and, of course, trying the excellent Pinnock gins helped too.
One advantage of being at the very top of the tower is that the view is even better. Dan and Nigel pointed out features of the landscape we hadn’t spotted when left to our own devices. Due north 30 miles away from one of the windows we could just make out Birmingham, mirage-like on the horizon, with a very hazy Coventry to the right and the Malvern Hills to the left.
The Pinnock range currently consists of the London Dry, the first to launch in late 2018, plus Rhubarb and Strawberry and Sloe, Damson and Honey. The walls are covered in awards for Pinnock gins and we quickly came to understand why.
We started off with an introduction to the history and provenance of Pinnock and gin in general and, crucially, a tasting. Dan has created all of his gins to be palatable when drunk neat so that is how we first tasted them. We liked all of them. Once we’d established a favourite, we moved on to the gin and tonic stage. I chose the Rhubarb and Strawberry with Indian Tonic while my companion picked the Sloe Gin and Bitter Lemon (a big hit for Pinnock at summer festivals). Both delicious.
After the tasting, we were ready to learn to create our own unique gin. Dan and Nigel taught us all about the standard and optional ingredients. Juniper is, of course, the key ingredient without which a drink is not a gin but there is a huge amount of choice when it comes to the optional botanicals that make one gin different to another. We were given a long list of these, helpfully divided up into types such as citrus, herbal, floral, spices, fruits, and nuts. For anyone interested in cookery and drinks, this was a fascinating exercise in really thinking about flavours and what might work together or not, so that we could create our personalised gin.
After much discussion, we made our choice of botanicals and set to work weighing and measuring and adding our ingredients to our copper still. Dan and Nigel were always on hand to offer guidance while not interfering with the general direction we wanted to take.
The next step was the distilling process which brought to mind school chemistry lessons of ancient memory, though much more fun. While there weren’t any Bunsen burners or pipettes in sight, there was a lot of familiar lab-type equipment to play with – tubes, hot plates, beakers, spigots. Our hosts let us do most of the work while giving tips and advice.
Once our gin was ready we bottled and labelled it. Then we all tried it. We were quite amazed that we had managed to come up with something not unpleasant.
Dan and Nigel were very polite about our concoction, which we chose to call Cheers.
The next stage in our Castle Experience was a three-course dinner in the Castle’s restaurant. Once we’d negotiated the narrow tower stairs, we were shown to our table in a lovely dining room with huge picture windows overlooking that stunning view again. We felt like we were sitting right on the edge and we had the best seats in the house to watch the world change colour as the sun went down.
We were already far too gin-soaked to trouble the wine menu. I thought it better not start mixing my drinks at this point in proceedings and chose one of the pub’s special cocktails. The appropriately named Castle Garden was a thing of fluorescent green and orange beauty, combining gin, Midori and tonic with fresh mint, orange, lime and pink grapefruit. It was refreshing and very fruity. My companion, meanwhile, was more daring when it came to mixing her drinks but only managed a half of Estrella.
By this point in the evening we were in serious need of food. For her starter, my friend had a very satisfying dish of asparagus, crispy hen’s egg and hollandaise. Meanwhile, I tucked in to a huge portion of juicy king prawns, with chilli, garlic, sambuca and toasted sourdough.
The mains on the menu are divided into Main event and Home comforts. After being infused with so much gin we were both naturally drawn to the home comforts side.
I couldn’t resist the chef’s pie, which on the day we visited was lamb. This came with mash, roasted carrot and parsnip, kale and broccoli plus, most vitally, lashings of gravy.
A good old fashioned meaty, minty pie with good pastry.
My friend enjoyed the Castle Burger with crispy bacon and smoked cheese, served with small bowls of red cabbage slaw and tomato relish. And she particularly appreciated the thin French fries.
There is a short pudding menu plus a British cheese board on offer at the Castle at Edgehill. I picked the vanilla panna cotta in the mistaken belief it would be a light option. Instead, it came served in a large glass – a deep layer of cool, set creamy panna cotta topped with warm raspberry compote, finished off with whipped cream and freeze-dried raspberries. It was like a cross between an ice cream sundae and a spongeless trifle and quite delicious. Needless to say, I finished it.
My companion claimed to be full at this point and was more sensible than I was. She managed to stop herself from ordering the sticky toffee pudding and had one scoop of good raspberry sorbet to polish off her meal.
After all our hard work at the gin school and our delicious dinner, we were very happy that we were staying at the Castle. Fittingly, all the rooms have battle-appropriate names. We were in the smaller tower in the Sir Jacob Astley suite, named for a Royalist commander in the English Civil War.
Our room’s decor mixed lots of exposed stonework, neutrally painted walls, mullioned windows, and archways instead of standard doors. We enjoyed the feeling of staying in our own castle chamber (though with modern home comforts). The suite consists of a double bedroom with a small sitting area with a comfy armchair plus a bijou single room, so Sir Jacob would be ideal for a couple travelling with a child or two friends wanting a bit of privacy and not wishing to sleep head to toe. Dogs are also welcome here as overnight guests for a small surcharge.
The next stage in our Castle Experience was a hearty cooked breakfast. We both picked the full English and did not regret it – lovely ingredients, well cooked. It is worth mentioning that guests staying on weekday nights are offered continental breakfast.
The pub is in an incredible position – view-wise hard to beat. It’s a nice reminder that holidaying at home can still surprise you.
There are lots of other things to occupy you locally if you decide to stay for a few days. There’s a one-hour battlefield walk that begins straight from the pub plus the National Trust property Upton House and Gardens just up the road. Places like Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick and Leamington Spa are all shortish drives away. Banbury is 15 minutes in a taxi for those who want to visit without a car – for example, it’s less than an hour on the Chiltern Line from Marylebone to Banbury.
The Castle at Edgehill Gin School and indeed the whole experience was excellent and left us with the feeling we’d been away for far longer than one night. We went home well fed and happy and with a sense of achievement too. We’re now looking forward to surprising friends with G+Ts made from the gin we invented. Thoroughly recommended.
Edge Hill
Banbury
Oxfordshire
OX15 6DJ
