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CAPE TOWN GIN, South Africa

Oude Molen Distillery, Worcester Street, Swannie River, Grabouw, 7160, Western Cape, South Africa

AROUND THE WORLD, ONE BOTTLE AT A TIME,

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A colourful neighbourhood, a complicated history and a gin inspired by the flavours that travelled through Cape Town.

Whilst London is home for me at the moment, Cape Town is where I was born and grew up.

I wrote about the Waterfront in my post about Pienaar & Son and the Bo-Kaap, an area climbing the slopes of Signal Hill, is just a short walk away from there. It's one of those places that is instantly recognisable from the brightly painted houses and cobbled streets, but there is a lot more to it than the pretty photographs suggest. This colourful district has inspired a colourful cocktail too — a Bramble Sour.

The Bo-Kaap was formerly known as the Malay Quarter and its origins go back to the 1760s, when small huurhuisies, or rental houses, were built and leased to enslaved people and political exiles brought to the Cape from places including Indonesia, Malaysia and East Africa. The community that developed here became known as the Cape Malays, although the history and heritage of the neighbourhood is much more diverse than that name suggests.

The houses were originally fairly simple, narrow terraces, often with surprisingly deep interiors to make the most of the limited frontage. The famous colours are often said to date from the period after emancipation in 1834, when residents were no longer required to keep their rented houses white and began painting them in bright colours. Whether every house was painted specifically as an act of freedom is difficult to prove, but the colours have certainly become an important symbol of the area's identity.

The Bo-Kaap also survived when other historic areas of Cape Town were demolished during apartheid. Under the Group Areas Act, however, the neighbourhood was designated for the Cape Malay community and people who did not fit that classification were forcibly removed.

Today, the Bo-Kaap is still a living neighbourhood, with a predominantly Muslim community, mosques, family businesses and generations of families who have called it home. It is also one of Cape Town's biggest tourist attractions, which brings its own problems. Rising property prices and the pressure of tourism and development are making it increasingly difficult for some long-established residents to remain. The debate is therefore not simply about preserving colourful houses; it is about preserving the people, culture and community that give the area its meaning.

There are plenty of gins produced around Cape Town and the wider Western Cape, but Cape Town Gin takes its inspiration from the flavours and trading history of the city itself.

Founded in 2015 by Jaco Boonzaaier and fellow investors, the brand began with three gins: Classic Dry, Rooibos Red and The Pink Lady. The original idea was to create a gin that felt genuinely connected to Cape Town rather than simply putting the city's name on the label.

The Classic Dry is the clearest example of this. Many of the botanicals we associate with gin arrived in Europe from Asia via the old spice routes, with the Cape of Good Hope becoming an important stopping point for ships travelling between East and West. Those same spices also found their way into Cape Malay cooking, creating a rather lovely link between Cape Town's maritime history, its food and the gin.

The original recipe included juniper, coriander, cardamom, star anise, cassia bark, citrus peel and orris root. It's a familiar gin structure, but the combination of warm spices gives it a distinctly Cape Town connection.

Cape Town Gin is contract distilled and lists Oude Molen Distillery in Grabouw as the producer. Oude Molen is one of the largest contract distillers in the Cape, distilling gin for a number of brands.

The original range also included Rooibos Red, using South African rooibos, and The Pink Lady, which brought a softer floral side to the collection. The brand has since expanded beyond those first three expressions.

The Pink Lady brings another little piece of Cape Town into the story too, taking its name from the famous Mount Nelson Hotel, affectionately known as the Pink Lady.

I think that sums up Cape Town Gin rather nicely. From the spices that arrived through the old trading routes, to the flavours of Cape Malay cooking, indigenous botanicals and even one of the city's best-known landmarks, the range brings together tradition, history and the places that make Cape Town what it is.