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A stiff wind sends clouds scurrying over Cwm Bychan like frightened sheep. Mount Snowdon looms on the horizon, but today, as often, the summit is a no-show. There’s a cold, steady drizzle. It’s the most Welsh of days and the most Welsh of scenery; boots squelching as we clamber through ancient beech and hawthorn woods, past the stark remnants of copper mining, and on and up to knobbly heights, braided with mosses and bracken in tweed colours and glinting with blu-ish slate.
Winter it might be but, as RAW Adventures guide Ross Worthington points out, with a basket and keen eye, it’s still possible to find the botanicals that go into making Forager’s Gin. And so, as we pick our way along trails, listening to anecdotes and Arthurian legends from a guy who knows these hills like the back of his hand, we stop for golden gorse and heather.
“Spring and summer are peak season for foraging,” says Ross. “Juniper, the number one ingredient in gin, is found on Snowdon’s slopes, too, while sea buckthorn ripens on the coast in October and November.” Our walk descends abruptly to a sheer-sided gorge, where the Afon Glaslyn runs swift and clear. Which brings Ross to another key factor of making outstanding gin: water. It doesn’t get any purer than that which gushes down from the mountains here.
We’re on the newly launched ‘gin venture’, the latest brainwave of Palé Hall, a five-star Victorian country manor in a 50-acre estate on the fringes of Snowdonia National Park. The concept? A two-night stay revolving around gin and fine dining, including a guided foraging hike at Snowdon and a visit to the award-winning Snowdonia Distillery. As the global thirst for handcrafted gins shows no sign of waning, the idea is surely a winner – and a first in these parts.
Bracing hike over, it’s time for a drink, so on we drive through the bare, brooding mountains of North Wales to the Snowdonia Distillery. Opening in 2015 was something of a gamble for founder Chris Marshall, whose former lives involved investment management and professional skiing. Though passionate about drinking gin, making it was a bold move, especially for a perfectionist who, from the outset, had his heart set on small batches, locally foraged ingredients and hand bottling. Chris persuaded his wife to invest their life savings on a whim. She acquiesced. The distillery opened in a region where the last closed its doors in 1900.
“Gin making is alchemy, the magic being how to impart and retain flavour,” says Chris. “First you should fall in love with your eyes,” he adds, flashing a bottle embellished with Snowdon's silver-gilded contour lines, mapping out the terroir. “I went a bit overboard with the botanicals at first. Lavender, for instance – it tasted like perfume! Less is definitely more. Our gins speak of Snowdonia from start to finish, with the secret being slow distillation over weeks, not days, to capture the subtle notes of macerated botanicals.”
Like the carefully chosen botanicals in a craft gin, Palé Hall rounds out the experience with finesse. Expertly mixed gin cocktails by an open fire prelude a decadent, Michelin-star-standard eight-course tasting menu, playing up regional ingredients in dishes like venison loin with spiced squash puree and smoked bacon and roast squab pigeon with pistachio.
• Inside Palé Hall: it's like stepping back in time at this remarkable Victorian pile
And so to bed in the Churchill Suite, where the portly prime minister once stayed. It is magnificent, with a four-poster bed and a barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling inlaid with stained glass that resembles an upturned ship. The nightcap bottle of Forager’s Gin on the table might have tempted Churchill. “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire,” he once quipped. And he never even got to try the good stuff from Snowdonia.
The ‘gin-venture’ starts at £1,642 for two including a two-night stay at Palé Hall, daily breakfast and dinner, RAW Adventure expedition, Snowdonia Distillery tour and transfers (01678 530 285; palehall.co.uk)
• Read the full expert review: Palé Hall, Wales
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