Lifting the spirits

Words by Hannah Tapping

One of the UK’s few wood-fired distilleries, Mounts Bay Distillery is redefining Cornish spirit making with a slower, more elemental approach.

The first thing you notice at Mounts Bay Distillery is the smell. It rolls out of the doorway before you even see the stills. A warm mixture of wood smoke, juniper, molasses, mingled with the salt on the sea air. Something elemental is happening here, something deliberate, something that refuses to be hurried.

There’s been an expansion since I first visited the distillery two years ago, with new, larger wood-fired copper stills finding home in a converted shipping container. They sit like sculptures, tall vessels with curved chests and long necks, linked by pipework and a soot-darkened hearth. Mounts Bay Distillery is one of only a few in the UK to run woodfired stills and owners Lisa and Ben talk with a quiet unboastful pride. For them, wood firing was a decision based on both flavour and practicality. “It makes a better product when you wood fire,” explains Ben. “Cooking with flames gives a Maillard reaction. It’s this reaction that makes bread taste toasty and coffee taste dark and robust. It is not a scorched taste, but more a fuller flavour. When you use a wood fire to make rum, you get those same lovely caramel tones and chocolatey smells.”

“In practical terms,” Ben continues, “wood was the natural choice. We use offcuts from local tree surgeons. It’s not the kind of wood you burn in a wood burner, but it works perfectly for this.” The environmental logic is also simple; using wood is considered carbon neutral. Burning wood releases what the tree took in while it lived, so while it’s not negative, it is neutral. Behind the stills, there is a water system, planned as with all things here, with intention. A tank catches rainwater, a pump moves hot water from the condenser to a holding tank, then into the fermenter. “We try not to waste anything and rainwater actually makes a better rum as it contains less chlorine and fewer chemicals,” adds Ben.

As we step up into the container, Ben lifts the lid on an open fermenter. The surface twitches and bubbles as if alive. “Rum wash is an open ferment; it just bubbles away and, once ready, we pump it to the big still.” A heady smell from another still hangs in the air; this time it’s juniper and coriander: “These kind of robust spices can steep for longer, but I need to pick a kilo of samphire later to add in to this ready for distilling tomorrow. The samphire is lighter so is added last minute. Some distillers vapour-infuse, but we prefer to drop it into the actual still with the other flavours for a more full-bodied taste.”

“I’ll start a batch of gin on a Friday and leave it until Tuesday. The liquid will look muddy at first, but once we run it through the still it will clear during the distillation process and then it’s left to stand for a month. As we use a lot of botanicals you can get some louching but we don’t mind that; it’s an indicator of a high botanic content, which improves flavour and balance.” For the uninitiated, louching is the phenomenon where a clear spirit such as gin turns cloudy, opaque or milky when water or a mixer is added. This occurs because the high-proof alcohol initially holds essential oils from botanicals; however, when diluted with water, these oils become insoluble and form a micro-emulsion, resulting in the cloudy appearance. Louching is a positive indicator of a spirit’s high botanical content.

We head into the bottling area where Ben dips a glass into a fresh vat of white rum. “This is from Friday,” he says. It’s bright and sharp, with aromas of sugar and heat. Before the ageing process begins, the rum is put ‘on chips’ for a month; meaning it’s basically steeped with a giant woodchip tea bag. “We always try to make our processes circular and so Jack’s Kombucha takes the chips once soaked to make spiced rum kombucha, as does Shoals Brewery, for their Christmas porter!”

He holds up another glass, this one deeper in colour than the first, tapped from a row of oak casks. “This rum has been in the cask for a year and is currently sitting at 64% proof. There’s no additional flavour added, it all comes from the fermentation process.” I learn that rum ageing is complex, involving extraction of compounds from the barrel wood, oxidation from air ingress and the formation of new flavour molecules (esters) through chemical reactions. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) produce acids, including lactic acid, during the fermentation phase, often in a spontaneous or wild fermentation environment. These acids then react with the alcohol to form esters, during the distillation or the initial rest period. “All this mixes with the alcohol and brings out some really cool flavours,” adds Ben.

The casks themselves have a history of their own, being ex-whisky casks from a Speyside cooperage. “Their first use is for bourbon, the second for whisky, and then our rum is the third. As well as adding flavour from the wood, the barrels are also subtractive and so allow the spirit to breathe, meaning the bad flavours leave allowing the good ones to develop. You get banana, then chocolate, then the molasses comes through as the maturation process continues. The longer you leave it the better,” explains Ben. Unafraid to experiment with flavours, he next introduces me to a special batch made for nearby Stones Reef bar and restaurant. Currently sitting at 41% proof this honeycomb and Cornish sea-salt vodka is dangerously delicious.

With the two new stills, production at the distillery is better able to keep up with demand. “For the same amount of rum, it used to take four days, now it takes one. And not only does it save time, the spirit tastes better.” There’s also been growth elsewhere in the company this year, with new team member, Chris, heading up sales and marketing and Simon helping on Fridays with everything from bottling and labelling to distilling. There’s also a small, but gloriously charming, bottle shop open to customers every Friday, stocked with a full selection of spirits to sample alongside personally curated, elegant glassware. 

For such carefully crafted spirits, only the most beautiful bottles will do. Illustrator Jago Silver’s design adorns the Keynvor bottles, a honey spiced rum balanced with salty seaweed umami tones. Ebba gin, which gets its crisp citrus notes from Cornish seaberries, sea aster and locally foraged samphire comes in an exquisite ceramic bottle, designed especially for Mounts Bay Distillery. Rum Dhu now comes in Gold, Black Spiced and Pure White form and the accompanying tasting notes read like pirate tales from days gone by. Fitting that a spirit with a seafaring history should be distilled on the coast.

I love it here, not least because Lisa and Ben’s passion is so infectious. While it’s a working distillery, a space filled with heat and steam, it also holds stories that cling to the rafters like smoke. The spirits made here carry the imprint of the place; wood, sea air, craft, human hands that do not rush and, as the fires under the stills keep burning, so spirits lift.

mountsbaydistillery.com