The inspiration for our gins - both the botanicals in our London Dry and the flavour combination for our flavoured gins come from two handwritten recipe books passed down for generations in our family. We came up with the idea for Bashall Spirits when we realised that our love of gin was the perfect route to bring these traditional recipes to a wider audience.
The oldest book was collected and written Anne Taylor, my great*8-aunt in 1750. She has extraordinarily beautiful handwriting and the book is lovely.
The second book was collected and written by my great*5-grandmother Jennet Worsley around the middle of the nineteenth century (she didn’t write a date in it). Jennet is an old Lancashire name common in our family, and is my middle name. It’s a fascinating book - although her handwriting isn’t quite as neat and photographic as Anne’s!
The books contain a huge range of fascinating recipes including ones inspired by current events like the Great Exhibition, but the most common theme is using seasonal ingredients that grow locally in the Lancashire hedgerows and woods. These are the ones that we are particularly interested in and the ones that mainly inspired our gins. The botanicals in our London Dry, on which all our flavoured gins are based, includes traditional Lancashire flavours that can be found in every hedgerow like caraway and Cobb nuts, to locally-growing fruit like cranberries that used to be commonly used in Lancashire recipes but which we now don’t associate with the area at all - but they still grow in Moor Piece, the wildlife reserve in Bashall.
Our fruitiest gin - Damson & Elderberry - is based on a Damson wine recipe. Damson trees were very common features of English orchards, and the twist Anne gave to her wine recipe is the addition of rich elderberries, which grow abundantly in fields and woods across the UK even today. The fragrant flowers of the elder bush have become very commonly used as a flavour in recent time, but the delicious berries are inexplicably largely overlooked.
The Orange and Quince gin is based on a marmalade recipe (or ‘marmolet’ in 18th-century English). Oranges have been widely imported to England for centuries, and Anne enchanted their citrussy tartness by the addition of jammy quince. Quince trees grow widely across England and can still be found, though not so commonly, and the fruit was frequently used in 18th century recipes.
Parkin is a traditional cake in Lancashire and Yorkshire that is widely eaten even today. Every family would have had their own recipe, and our gin is inspired by Jennet’s 19th-century version. Lancashire Parkin differs from Yorkshire Parkin, and locals may want to know which county Jennet’s inspiration comes from. Bashall is in Lancashire, but was in the West Riding of Yorkshire until the 70s - but it was right on the Lancashire border and separated from the rest of Yorkshire by the fells of the Forest of Bowland. So really it’s the best of both! The key flavours of both kinds of Parkin are treacle and ginger, so we think our Parkin can be enjoyed by everyone, whether you favour the white rose or the red.