‘I’ve turned my daughter’s old bedroom into a distillery’

Peter, who is a commercial manager for a Huddersfield company, has been on hand to help both with business know-how and to take on the task of painting the bottoms of the bottles to give them their distinctive look.

Son Sam, who is on a management training programme in Melton Mowbray, and daughter Natasha, a Cambridge medical science graduate, now training with the NHS in the South of England, have also been business advisors.

During the day, when she’s not teaching at The Mount School in Huddersfield or working with private pupils, Jacqueline is making gin, 28 bottles at a time.

She jokes: “Some people say they are going to turn their spare bedrooms into a sewing room, I’ve turned mine into a distillery.”

While Jacqueline wasn’t looking for a new career, she says the gin-making came along at the right moment. She had just completed a five-year PhD in musicology at the University of Huddersfield – looking at 18th century Italian opera – and had more time on her hands.

Today, however, she’s busier than ever. When not making gin and teaching, she sings in choirs, gives gin presentation evenings, attends Gin Society festivals and delivers her products locally.

JacqSon now has four flavoured gins: original, strawberries and cream, star anise and chilli, and apple and raisin. All are 42% proof, which is fairly typical for craft gins. They sell for £39.99 per 70cl bottle.

“That might seem a lot,” she says, “but what you have to bear in mind is that for every litre of neat spirit I use I have to pay £28.74 duty before I do anything else.”

Jacqueline buys in supplies of neutral grain spirit, to which she adds the botanical ingredients and then distils. Occasionally she makes one-off gins for special orders. Perhaps her most ‘special’ gin was a lychee and ginger batch for Natasha’s wedding.

While she says it’s hard to beat “a nice gin and tonic” she recommends drinkers try other mixers and even consider taking their gin hot and neat.

“It’s a revelation,” she added, “a shot of it is lovely and warming.”

Gin, it would seem, has become the drink of the day, just as it was for the Victorians with their gin palaces. Gin bars are springing up once again in our towns and cities.

As Jacqueline points out, gin has a habit of coming back into fashion on a regular basis.

As she explains: “When I was doing my research into gin I discovered that gin has a renaissance once every 100 years. It was extremely popular in the 1720s and then again in the 1820s; in the 1920s it was the basis of fashionable cocktails; and 100 years later we’re seeing it increasing in popularity once again.”

And she’s not the only new craft gin distiller in the area. Divine Gin is another local brand, produced by Ray Woodhead from premises in New Mill and sold at many of the same outlets as JacqSon.

The Wine and Spirit Trade Association says there are now 95 different gin brands on the UK market and there are signs that the growth will continue into the near future, particularly as the Chancellor froze spirits duty in the last budget.

A YouGov poll found gin is the most popular spirit, with nearly one third of drinkers voting it their favourite.

It would seem that it’s cheers all round for distillers like Jacqueline and Ray.