THE GIN PASSPORT ATLAS - DISTILLERY STORY- PINNED ON THE MAP - UK/ EUROPE
RATIO LONDON DRY GIN, Berkshire, England, UK
Richard Hammond has spent a surprisingly large part of his television career being told he is small. At 5ft 7in, he isn't actually tiny, but when you spend years standing next to Jeremy Clarkson and James May, both of whom have rather more vertical real estate, perspective becomes important. On Top Gear, Hammond was routinely the target of jokes about his height, earning the nickname “The Hamster” and becoming the shortest member of television's most dysfunctional motoring trio.
So perhaps there is something particularly appropriate about his gin being called Ratio. Although this time the joke isn't about Hammond's height. The name comes from the process used to create the gin: the team worked with the individual botanicals as separate distillates, adjusting their proportions until they found the right balance. In other words, the ratio actually matters.
Hammond worked closely with Hawkridge Distillers to develop the gin and, by all accounts, was considerably more hands-on than the average celebrity whose name appears on a bottle. He wanted something that reflected the places he loves rather than simply putting his face on a London Dry, and the Lake District became the obvious inspiration.
The botanicals tell that story. There are bilberries, wild gorse flowers and young nettles, ingredients Hammond associates with walking and travelling around the Lakes. The bilberries in particular have a personal connection to Bleaberry Tarn and the hills around Buttermere, while gorse grows along routes he knows around the Newlands Pass. Honey is also part of the recipe.
Hammond has described the result as taking a London Dry and “pulling it through a hedge”, which is probably a more useful description of his intentions than anything involving celebrity gin. He wanted the spirit to remain dry and recognisably gin while bringing in something of the landscape he considers his bolt hole.
Even the bottle has a Hammond reference hidden in it. Viewed from above, its shape resembles a cog, a nod to his engineering and motoring background and to the craftsmanship behind the gin. So there are little pieces of Hammond scattered throughout the thing, rather than simply his name slapped across the label.
And then there is that name again: Ratio. After years of being measured against Clarkson and May — usually unfavourably, and sometimes quite literally — Hammond has finally found something where getting the proportions right is the whole point. On Top Gear, being the smallest of the three was a running joke. With Ratio, getting the measurements right is what makes the gin work.
It is made by Hawkridge Distillers in Hampshire, the award-winning distillery that Hammond partnered with for the project.
There is something rather fitting about Hammond choosing a name that sounds technical, precise and faintly automotive for a gin that is actually about the countryside. After all those years of being the small one in Top Gear, perhaps Ratio is Hammond's way of proving that, when it comes to gin, size really isn't everything.
"Small in stature. Big on ratio."
Show me a bottle and
I'll tell you a story.
