FIRST JOURNEYS - 80 GINS AROUND THE WORLD - PIN 65 OF 80
ONE GIN, Midlands, UK
(Supporting Water Projects in Africa)
AROUND THE WORLD, ONE BOTTLE AT A TIME,
PHILEAS FOGG WOULD SURELY APPROVE
A gin with a rather good reason for being here — every bottle helps fund access to clean water.
Whilst One Gin is based in Richmond upon Thames, London, there is an Africa focus here because of the work carried out through The One Foundation.
It all started with Duncan Goose, who was moved by a photograph of a young girl sitting beside a padlocked tap in Nairobi. He already knew what life without clean water could look like after experiencing the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras in 1998. That experience eventually led him to create One Water, with profits helping to fund clean water projects in communities where access was limited.
The One Foundation was established in 2006 and the idea has grown considerably since then. Together with One Water and its partners, it has now invested more than £30 million in water, sanitation and hygiene projects and says its work has helped change the lives of more than 5 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa.
One Gin followed in 2017, launched on World Water Day with the same principle: create something people want to buy and use it to help fund something people desperately need. At least 10% of One Gin's profits goes towards The One Foundation's work.
To create something distinctive, the team worked with Sarah Thompson, founder and master distiller of Blackdown Distillery in Sussex. The original recipe used nine classic gin botanicals and one rather special tenth — sage, picked from the grounds around the distillery. The sage was separately distilled and blended into the main spirit before being bottled at 43%.
I was lucky enough to visit Blackdown myself and meet Sarah before it closed, so this bottle has a bit of personal history for me too. The distillery was tucked away in a beautiful setting in the foothills of Blackdown Hill, surrounded by woodland in the South Downs National Park.
Sarah and her husband Nathan had created much more than somewhere to make gin, and I remember being particularly taken with her own limited-edition Sage Gin.
The original One Gin has moved on since those early days. It is now distilled in The Black Country, at Langley Distillery in Oldbury, but the sage remains at the heart of the recipe.
The range has also grown, with One Sage Gin, a classic One Gin expression, Sage & Apple, Sage & Orange Zest ready-to-drink cans and a Port Barrel Rested Gin, alongside a botanical vodka.
The One brand itself is still based in Richmond, and the connection between the drinks business and the foundation remains very much alive. The Foundation currently supports sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene projects with local partners, rather than simply drilling wells and walking away. The aim is to create systems that communities can continue to manage and maintain.
The butterfly on the bottle isn't just decorative either. It represents the butterfly effect — the idea that one small action can create a much bigger change. For One Gin, that means something as simple as buying a bottle can help provide clean water thousands of miles away.
I think that's what has always made One Gin interesting to me. The gin itself is only part of the story. There is the original recipe, the sage picked around a Sussex distillery, the move to the Midlands and then the much bigger story behind the bottle — using something as ordinary as a drink to help tackle something as fundamental as access to clean water.
It also makes the name rather appropriate. One bottle at a time, one life at a time.
"One Bottle At a Time"
Cocktail : Sage smash topped with apple juice
"Show me a bottle
and I'll tell you a story."
The newer bottle was actually designed so that, once the gin is finished and the label removed, it becomes a
water carafe, bringing the story full circle.
