Production

This field-to-bottle approach allows the folk at Ramsbury to tightly control every aspect of production, from farming and harvesting the wheat, to how their filled bottles are packed and dispatched.

Raw ingredients

The distillery sits amidst the 19,000 acres of land that comprise the Ramsbury estate so vodka and gin production start in the estate's wheat fields surrounding the distillery where they grow a variety of wheat called Horatio. 100% of the wheat used is sourced from the estate.

The Horatio wheat is hammer milled into a rough flour in the milling shed next to the distillery.

Water sourced from Ramsbury Estates lake is filtered using UV filtration and reverse osmosis to ensure its purity.

Mashing

A 3000-litre continuous agitation mash tun is filled with the milled wheat and water and is step heated from 55 to 62°C with exogenous enzymes for liquification and saccharification.

Fermentation

The process moves to one of five 7000-litre fermentation vessels where distillers' yeast is added to start fermentation which after four days produces a beer-like wash.

Distillation

The wash is distilled in a Carl stainless steel stripping still with 21 copper plates to produce low wines of around 76% alc./vol. These are reduced to 35% alc./vol. with Ramsbury's own purified water and redistilled in the distillery's 1,600-litre pot still that feeds a 43-plate copper rectification column. The vapour is further purified in a polishing/demethylising column to produce a neutral 96.5% alc./vol. spirit.

This 96.5% alc./vol. spirit is the base for Ramsbury Vodka and Gin and in both cases, this is reduced to 50% alc./vol. with Ramsbury's own purified water and redistilled in the distillery's 450-litre copper gin still. Prior to the gin distillation, the nine botanicals that flavour the gin are steeped in the spirit for 12 hours.

Eight of the nine gin botanicals are used in a dried state but the quince, grown in the grounds of the distillery is used fresh. The other botanicals are juniper, angelica, cinnamon, liquorice, orris root, coriander, dried lemon peel and dried orange peel.

Bottling

Both the vodka and gin are bottled on the estate with each bottle hand-filled.