Inverroche Distillery – Verity Wines

Inverroche is a family business. Owned and operated by Lorna Scott and her two children, Rohan and Lauren. “Our dream was to create a premium spirit brand which is original and authentically South African. We make gins with ingredients which help us to tell the story of our common heritage as well as the close connection which has existed for millennia, between man and nature at the tip of Africa.” The name Inverroche is an amalgamation of the Gaelic word Inver (meaning confluence of the waters), and Roche (French for rock). It is a celebration, not only of the founder’s shared Scottish and French Huguenot roots, but also the unique environment surrounding the distillery. The meeting of water and rock which gave rise to the abundant floral biome, called Fynbos.

Inverroche’s master distillers have developed a proprietary way of gently extracting the beautiful aromatic oils from the roots, bark, flowers and berries of the Fynbos. The combination of these indigenous plants with traditional botanicals like juniper berries, citrus peels, cassia, angelica, cinnamon, cardamom and coriander among others, give Inverroche gins their unique character. This unique biome, which stretches along the Western and Southern Cape coast of South Africa between the sea and the various mountain ranges, is home to over 9,000 plant species that grow here and nowhere else on earth. Much of it edible and carbohydrate-rich, many with medicinal properties, this rich resource is credited with having helped humankind survive the last ice age right here at the Southern tip of Africa.

It all started with Mini-Meg, a miniature 2 litre copper pot still. She sat on the Scott’s kitchen table for three years and through trial and error theInverroche range of Fynbos gins were conceived and born. The pot still is charged with their base spirit, with the botanicals layered in specially designed steam baskets. When the still is gently heated the spirit vapour extracts the aromatic oils (from the botanicals) that then collect in the helm and travel down the condenser, culminating in precious drops of complex spirit infused with layers of flavour and aroma. Magnanimous Meg Is the nickname for the magnificent 1,000 litre wood fired copper pot still used to coax the aromas and flavours from the ingredients used to make the spirits. She is large, custom designed, built in Stellenbosch and a little eccentric. Hence her being named after Meg Dodds, the irascible landlady in Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel St Ronan’s Well.