A new gin inspired by and made in Rye has just gone on sale. It’s called Cinque Spirit and has been developed by Rye resident and art director Becky McOwen-Banks. The first 120 bottles started to be sold at the Rye Creative Centre Christmas Fair at the weekend, 29 and 30 November, but as Becky explains, getting it ready for the event was a close run thing.
How do you bottle a town? Not its water, mind you, but its very essence – the creak of ancient timber beams, the salt-bright tang of the coast, the sweetness hidden in centuries-old hedgerows?
That’s the question I found myself asking last September 2024 when, after 14 years of calling Rye home, I returned from a stint living in London to discover Chapel Down had stopped making their gin. As someone who’s been a self-confessed gin lover and frequent “gin tourist” – forever bringing back specimens from different corners of the UK and the world – it struck me that our historic little town deserved its own spirit. We have so many stories to tell, and our unique location seemed perfect for capturing them in the flavours and botanicals of gin.
I’m not someone who sits still very much. I’m not much of a telly watcher and once I get an idea in my head, it really does gain traction. The investigation started. I made friends with a distiller. The journey for Cinque Spirit began.
Chasing flavours, dodging diesel
Five months ago, we went into taste development sessions with a clear vision: I wanted to represent this special historic town in liquid form. I wanted to bring forward the ancient timbers of our lovely buildings and picturesque High Street. I wanted to capture our unique position – not quite on the coast, not quite on the beach, but definitely coastal. And I wanted to honour those ancient laneways and hedgerows that connect us to the land and our deeper past.
The experimentation phase was… educational. I worked with my distiller testing over 10 different seaweeds. Most of them, by the way, tasted like diesel. I would not recommend them, and they absolutely do not make it into the final cut.
What did make the cut became the three signature botanicals that tell Rye’s story:
Pink peppercorns for the ancient timbers – that deep warmth and spiciness really made me think of those splits in the beams, still keeping everything standing, giving a strong base to the flavour.
Sea buckthorn berries for the coast – they grow down at the harbour, and they add brightness both in flavour and visually with their beautiful orange colour. When we use them in distillate form, taking them into the alcohol, they become very sharp and tart, coming across as much more citrus than you’d expect.
Honeysuckle for the hedgerows – this was a deliberate choice. Many gins use elderflower to give a soft sweetness, but I wanted more of a challenge. Very few gins use honeysuckle, yet it’s seen in so many of our ancient hedge ways around these parts. When you taste Cinque, you’ll catch that honeysuckle sweetness on your mid-tongue.
These three unique botanicals sit on a bed of five traditional ones. As a gin, we have to have juniper, and I wanted it very, very juniper-forward. When you taste it, it’s definitely a gin as a spirit, not just any other spirit dressed up in a pretty bottle.
When botanicals misbehave
Here’s the thing about creating gin: it begins like maths, but it doesn’t continue like maths. Once you’ve sorted out the various proportions of your botanicals using pipettes to create your individual taste and flavour in a small batch, you then start to scale up. And that’s when botanicals stop behaving themselves.
We adored the recipe we achieved for that first small batch – the lovely warmth of the peppercorns, the brightness and tang of the buckthorn berries, that honeysuckle sweetness coming through perfectly. But as we moved into larger vats, the pink peppercorns became very greedy. For the last six weeks, we were held in a remixing and re-evaluation situation. It was true jeopardy – I genuinely didn’t know if I would have any gin to show before Christmas.
I’d already started speaking to Tamara at Rye Creative Centre because it felt like the fitting launch place for Cinque Gin. We love the creativity of Rye and are very much connected to the Creative Centre, coming every time there’s an open day to support the artists and see the work that’s going on. My aim was to launch this week at their Christmas Fair, but it was very much down to the wire.
My first ever 120-bottle batch from the still only arrived on Friday evening, 28 November. All Thursday and all Friday, we weren’t sure we were going to make the grade.
But here it is.
Writing Rye’s story, one bottle at a time
This is my very special story for Rye – even the skyline on the label is my view from the London-side platform of my morning commutes. It’s something we deserve – another representation of giving back to our town, where we all, as residents, keep on writing the story of Rye. As it says on the bottle, Cinque Spirit is a liquid love letter to Rye.
You can find it at behind the bar at The Winery (and hopefully in other spots on the High Street very soon). You’ll also be able to buy online – until then DM on Instagram to buy or find out more.
Follow our journey on Instagram @cinque_spirit to see what we’re up to next – including some rather exciting cocktail recipes I’ve been developing.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this gin-making adventure, it’s that the best stories are worth the wait. Even if they come down to the wire on a Friday evening, with botanicals behaving badly and diesel-flavoured seaweed experiments in the rear view mirror.
Here’s to Rye. Here’s to Cinque.
Image Credits: Becky McOwen-Banks .