Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard
June 17, 2022

Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

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June 17, 2022

Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

Hope also offers a chance for guests to visit the distillery. Can you tell us a little more about what do visitors experience?

Our Tasting Room, which overlooks the Distillery floor, so you get to see all the equipment and often action on the floor, is currently open Wednesday to Friday in the afternoons.  We will start opening on Saturday afternoons again from September onwards.  We offer 2 different gin tastings: a “mini” tasting, which is a taster of the 3 Hope Gins served with tonic and suggested ideal garnish pairing; and then a “Flagship” tasting which is a gin & tonic with the 3 Hope Gins as well as our entry level Hobbs Cape Dry Gin.  They are both served “DIY” style, so you get to pour your own drink and learn how best to serve.  We also offer a range of classic cocktails and gin and tonics, and you can choose any of the “family” gins – ie the gins we distil for other brands – to be served in a gin and tonic.

‍

You also craft gin for a number of other brands (Bloedlemoen, Musgrave, Clemengold, A Mari to name a few) what benefits does this hold for Hope gin?

We initially launched also distilling Musgrave, with a two-fold intention: firstly to try and help grow the local market (as it was tiny back then!) and then also to actually just ensure that the Distillery equipment was being used (and generating income!).  When the guys behind Bloedlemoen Gin approached us to distil their gin, we realized that distilling for other brands not only helped us in those two ways, but also allowed us more time to play and develop recipes and hone our craft.  So we slowly added to our line up, cementing our place as one of the key craft distilleries in the Western Cape.

‍

What's next for you and Hope Gin - any exciting plans?  

So over the last few years we’ve also added other spirits to our range, and now produce an agave spirit (with agave imported from Mexico), an agricole-style rum (distilled from freshly pressed sugar cane) and our grape based vodka.  Next up we’re going into partnership with others to launch a small canning business and will be designing some ready to drink cocktails, served in can.  And then we’re also – even more exciting – planning to launch a cocktail bar as part of the Tasting Room upstairs.  We will also aim to launch this in September, serving a carefully curated offering of classic and not-so-classic cocktails, working with one of Cape Town’s talented bar tenders.

June 17, 2022

Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

Hope also offers a chance for guests to visit the distillery. Can you tell us a little more about what do visitors experience?

Our Tasting Room, which overlooks the Distillery floor, so you get to see all the equipment and often action on the floor, is currently open Wednesday to Friday in the afternoons.  We will start opening on Saturday afternoons again from September onwards.  We offer 2 different gin tastings: a “mini” tasting, which is a taster of the 3 Hope Gins served with tonic and suggested ideal garnish pairing; and then a “Flagship” tasting which is a gin & tonic with the 3 Hope Gins as well as our entry level Hobbs Cape Dry Gin.  They are both served “DIY” style, so you get to pour your own drink and learn how best to serve.  We also offer a range of classic cocktails and gin and tonics, and you can choose any of the “family” gins – ie the gins we distil for other brands – to be served in a gin and tonic.

‍

You also craft gin for a number of other brands (Bloedlemoen, Musgrave, Clemengold, A Mari to name a few) what benefits does this hold for Hope gin?

We initially launched also distilling Musgrave, with a two-fold intention: firstly to try and help grow the local market (as it was tiny back then!) and then also to actually just ensure that the Distillery equipment was being used (and generating income!).  When the guys behind Bloedlemoen Gin approached us to distil their gin, we realized that distilling for other brands not only helped us in those two ways, but also allowed us more time to play and develop recipes and hone our craft.  So we slowly added to our line up, cementing our place as one of the key craft distilleries in the Western Cape.

‍

What's next for you and Hope Gin - any exciting plans?  

So over the last few years we’ve also added other spirits to our range, and now produce an agave spirit (with agave imported from Mexico), an agricole-style rum (distilled from freshly pressed sugar cane) and our grape based vodka.  Next up we’re going into partnership with others to launch a small canning business and will be designing some ready to drink cocktails, served in can.  And then we’re also – even more exciting – planning to launch a cocktail bar as part of the Tasting Room upstairs.  We will also aim to launch this in September, serving a carefully curated offering of classic and not-so-classic cocktails, working with one of Cape Town’s talented bar tenders.

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Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Words by
Lucy Beard

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Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

Contact SIANA Today

Contact your personal SIANA travel tailor today to start planning your next adventure. As a boutique travel agency specialising in tailor-made itineraries, we leave no stone unturned to create the most memorable holiday that meets your unique needs and desires.

Enquire Now

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Contact SIANA Today

Contact your personal SIANA travel tailor today to start planning your next adventure. As a boutique travel agency specialising in tailor-made itineraries, we leave no stone unturned to create the most memorable holiday that meets your unique needs and desires.

Enquire Now

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

Hope also offers a chance for guests to visit the distillery. Can you tell us a little more about what do visitors experience?

Our Tasting Room, which overlooks the Distillery floor, so you get to see all the equipment and often action on the floor, is currently open Wednesday to Friday in the afternoons.  We will start opening on Saturday afternoons again from September onwards.  We offer 2 different gin tastings: a “mini” tasting, which is a taster of the 3 Hope Gins served with tonic and suggested ideal garnish pairing; and then a “Flagship” tasting which is a gin & tonic with the 3 Hope Gins as well as our entry level Hobbs Cape Dry Gin.  They are both served “DIY” style, so you get to pour your own drink and learn how best to serve.  We also offer a range of classic cocktails and gin and tonics, and you can choose any of the “family” gins – ie the gins we distil for other brands – to be served in a gin and tonic.

‍

You also craft gin for a number of other brands (Bloedlemoen, Musgrave, Clemengold, A Mari to name a few) what benefits does this hold for Hope gin?

We initially launched also distilling Musgrave, with a two-fold intention: firstly to try and help grow the local market (as it was tiny back then!) and then also to actually just ensure that the Distillery equipment was being used (and generating income!).  When the guys behind Bloedlemoen Gin approached us to distil their gin, we realized that distilling for other brands not only helped us in those two ways, but also allowed us more time to play and develop recipes and hone our craft.  So we slowly added to our line up, cementing our place as one of the key craft distilleries in the Western Cape.

‍

What's next for you and Hope Gin - any exciting plans?  

So over the last few years we’ve also added other spirits to our range, and now produce an agave spirit (with agave imported from Mexico), an agricole-style rum (distilled from freshly pressed sugar cane) and our grape based vodka.  Next up we’re going into partnership with others to launch a small canning business and will be designing some ready to drink cocktails, served in can.  And then we’re also – even more exciting – planning to launch a cocktail bar as part of the Tasting Room upstairs.  We will also aim to launch this in September, serving a carefully curated offering of classic and not-so-classic cocktails, working with one of Cape Town’s talented bar tenders.

< Back to Classic Stories
Project Feature
• Issue no. 1

Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Words by
Lucy Beard
June 26, 2024
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Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

June 17, 2022

Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

Hope also offers a chance for guests to visit the distillery. Can you tell us a little more about what do visitors experience?

Our Tasting Room, which overlooks the Distillery floor, so you get to see all the equipment and often action on the floor, is currently open Wednesday to Friday in the afternoons.  We will start opening on Saturday afternoons again from September onwards.  We offer 2 different gin tastings: a “mini” tasting, which is a taster of the 3 Hope Gins served with tonic and suggested ideal garnish pairing; and then a “Flagship” tasting which is a gin & tonic with the 3 Hope Gins as well as our entry level Hobbs Cape Dry Gin.  They are both served “DIY” style, so you get to pour your own drink and learn how best to serve.  We also offer a range of classic cocktails and gin and tonics, and you can choose any of the “family” gins – ie the gins we distil for other brands – to be served in a gin and tonic.

‍

You also craft gin for a number of other brands (Bloedlemoen, Musgrave, Clemengold, A Mari to name a few) what benefits does this hold for Hope gin?

We initially launched also distilling Musgrave, with a two-fold intention: firstly to try and help grow the local market (as it was tiny back then!) and then also to actually just ensure that the Distillery equipment was being used (and generating income!).  When the guys behind Bloedlemoen Gin approached us to distil their gin, we realized that distilling for other brands not only helped us in those two ways, but also allowed us more time to play and develop recipes and hone our craft.  So we slowly added to our line up, cementing our place as one of the key craft distilleries in the Western Cape.

‍

What's next for you and Hope Gin - any exciting plans?  

So over the last few years we’ve also added other spirits to our range, and now produce an agave spirit (with agave imported from Mexico), an agricole-style rum (distilled from freshly pressed sugar cane) and our grape based vodka.  Next up we’re going into partnership with others to launch a small canning business and will be designing some ready to drink cocktails, served in can.  And then we’re also – even more exciting – planning to launch a cocktail bar as part of the Tasting Room upstairs.  We will also aim to launch this in September, serving a carefully curated offering of classic and not-so-classic cocktails, working with one of Cape Town’s talented bar tenders.

< Back to Classic Stories
Local Businesses

Hope Gin - Interview with Founder Lucy Beard

Words by
Lucy Beard
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Hope Distillery mixes free-spirited determination with a serious desire to produce spirits of exceptional quality. Established in 2014, Hope Distillery was the first licensed small batch distillery to open in Cape Town and we continue to uphold our reputation for quality and consistency across our range of carefully crafted spirits.

Resident Gin & Spirit Maker, Lucy Beard, steers a team of stillmen in the production of small batch vodka, agave spirit and a range of gins.

BOOK YOUR STAY NOW

Prior to creating Hope you lived and worked in London, UK. What made you relocate to South Africa, and what do you like the most about life on the African continent?

So we are originally from South Africa and met at university here.  We left together, driving up through Africa, and then ended up in London where we converted our legal qualifications and got fully immersed in London corporate life. It was only while taking a sabbatical year that we thought about moving back – and it’s a decision we certainly don’t have any regrets about. Although neither of us are from Cape Town originally (I’m from the Eastern Cape and Leigh is from Johannesburg), Cape Town was the place we had our hearts set on as it really is the foodie capital of South Africa and is of course surrounded by winelands, so it made sense on so many levels to base ourselves here.

‍

How did you come up with the idea of making Hope gin?

We took a sabbatical from our jobs in London and spent 10 months travelling in a van around Europe.  A month or so into our trip we had decided we didn’t want to go back to corporate life, and that it was time for something new.  We spent a few months trying to figure out what we should do and made the decision to move back to Cape Town before we settled on the gin idea.  It was after a few months in Spain, surrounded by so many drinking gin and tonics, that the idea for the gin was born.

‍

What's the inspiration and meaning behind the name Hope and why was it shortened from the original name, Hope on Hopkins?  

The initial inspiration was a bit of a laugh – our attitude was that we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, but were determined to jump into the new venture with both feet and not hold back, so we really just “hope like hell” that it worked. But then it made so much sense on other levels too: we’re right next to the Cape of Good Hope, and South Africa really needs to be filled with hope!  The Distillery is on Hopkins Street in Salt River, and so initially we called it Hope on Hopkins, which was descriptive of where we were based – but realised that it can be a bit of a mouthful and so we decided to simplify and just be known as Hope.

Do you remember the moment when you knew you had cracked your perfect gin recipe?  

‍We ended up having longer than planned to experiment with recipes, as our licensing took so much longer than anticipated to come through; We experimented a lot initially, and wanted to “crack” our London Dry recipe first and foremost. About 6 months in we finally cracked it – we had had friends taste a whole lot of our rather bad trial runs, and the smiles on their faces when we presented them our perfect recipe were enough to tell us we’d cracked it.

‍

How do you go about developing your gin recipes and botanical combinations?

‍ So for our London Dry, it had to be classic and juniper forward to be a London Dry, but we wanted it to be uniquely South African, so we use lemon pelargonium to add additional citrus notes.  For our African Botanical (formerly known as our Salt River Gin), we wanted to highlight some of the unique fynbos flavours and aromas, and then of course our Mediterranean Gin needed to taste of the Med – so olives, fresh herbs and lots of orange.  We also do a limited release range – and this is where we really get to play with botanicals: trying new and wonderful combinations (which don’t always quite work out as planned!).  My favourites in the limited series have been a fresh orange gin (distilled with freshly pulped organic orange peels which gave a magical orange flavour); a yuzu and cherry gin (distilled with salted cherry blossoms imported from Japan) and the chocolate orange gin we did for Easter a few years back.

‍

Given you use so many natural botanicals and resources, do seasonal environmental changes affect your recipe and gin flavour? How do you mitigate against them?

There are definitely differences in the batches of gin we distil and fluctuations in season definitely impact.  We noticed it particularly when we had the drought in Cape Town.  We do adjust recipes as we go to try and mitigate.  The biggest difference is always in the juniper (as this is always the botanical we use the most of) – we try to secure annual supply, and when sourcing new juniper, we get a selection of samples from different areas and distil it separately to analyse the flavour.  We then choose and adjust recipes if we think it’s required.

South Africa is quickly becoming the gin capital of the world, with so many people now embracing botanicals. Why do you feel botanicals stand out amongst the floral kingdom of other countries?

I feel that many of the botanicals unique to South Africa are incredible both in their variety but also in their “pungency” – there is an amazing strength of flavour to be found and a great variety of flavour, from herbaceous, to floral, to earthy, to rooty which is pretty special here.

‍

What is your favourite way to drink each of your gins?

We designed the London Dry Gin to be a martini gin, and I do love drinking it in an ice cold dry martini with a twist of lemon.  The African Botanical Gin makes for an amazingly refreshing gin & tonic, perfect on a sunny day and delicious with classic Indian or grapefruit tonic and a slice of grapefruit.  The Mediterranean Gin is great for cocktails – it adds another dimension to a Red Snapper (the gin version of the Bloody Mary) and also makes for a deliciously interesting Negroni.

‍

If you had to sumerise the specalist gin scene in South Africa how would you describe it?

Booming!  We had no idea when we launched 8 years ago that the gin scene would grow so dramatically here.  We were the 3rd local brand and 5thcraft distillery (of the 5 only 2 others made gin at that stage) on shelf and I think there are now about 500 different brands and over 50 different craft distilleries.  The choice is amazing and people have really taken the whole gin & tonic experience to heart and there is definitely a huge trend for gin bars and gin evenings where a range of different gins and different garnish offerings are experienced.

Hope also offers a chance for guests to visit the distillery. Can you tell us a little more about what do visitors experience?

Our Tasting Room, which overlooks the Distillery floor, so you get to see all the equipment and often action on the floor, is currently open Wednesday to Friday in the afternoons.  We will start opening on Saturday afternoons again from September onwards.  We offer 2 different gin tastings: a “mini” tasting, which is a taster of the 3 Hope Gins served with tonic and suggested ideal garnish pairing; and then a “Flagship” tasting which is a gin & tonic with the 3 Hope Gins as well as our entry level Hobbs Cape Dry Gin.  They are both served “DIY” style, so you get to pour your own drink and learn how best to serve.  We also offer a range of classic cocktails and gin and tonics, and you can choose any of the “family” gins – ie the gins we distil for other brands – to be served in a gin and tonic.

‍

You also craft gin for a number of other brands (Bloedlemoen, Musgrave, Clemengold, A Mari to name a few) what benefits does this hold for Hope gin?

We initially launched also distilling Musgrave, with a two-fold intention: firstly to try and help grow the local market (as it was tiny back then!) and then also to actually just ensure that the Distillery equipment was being used (and generating income!).  When the guys behind Bloedlemoen Gin approached us to distil their gin, we realized that distilling for other brands not only helped us in those two ways, but also allowed us more time to play and develop recipes and hone our craft.  So we slowly added to our line up, cementing our place as one of the key craft distilleries in the Western Cape.

‍

What's next for you and Hope Gin - any exciting plans?  

So over the last few years we’ve also added other spirits to our range, and now produce an agave spirit (with agave imported from Mexico), an agricole-style rum (distilled from freshly pressed sugar cane) and our grape based vodka.  Next up we’re going into partnership with others to launch a small canning business and will be designing some ready to drink cocktails, served in can.  And then we’re also – even more exciting – planning to launch a cocktail bar as part of the Tasting Room upstairs.  We will also aim to launch this in September, serving a carefully curated offering of classic and not-so-classic cocktails, working with one of Cape Town’s talented bar tenders.

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