With 28 botanicals – including dried grapefruit peel, chamomile flowers, lavender, cubeb pepper and even quince, plus one top-secret ingredient – Warner Edwards Honeybee Gin is a truly virtuosic effort of distilling. But, despite the complexity of its creation, it’s deceptively simple and silky smooth on the palate. But the more Tom followed this sad string of thought, the more it transformed into a spark of inspiration. Rather than bemoan the sad fate of honeybees, why not rally gin lovers across the UK to their cause? And why not use the amazing botanicals from his garden – itself a sanctuary for honeybees – to do it?

There’s a lot of fakery in this world,” Tom muses, “and we don’t do that. The bottle looks good, the liquid tastes great and the message is real. It’s not just one element; it’s all combined.” We cram our London Dry Gin with countryside flavour from fresh, farm-grown botanicals. So, our award-winning taste is all thanks to Mother Nature (and our expert distillers, of course).

It nearly killed me,” he laughs now, on the phone from Falls Farm, the beautiful Northamptonshire farm where he grew up, and which he would go on to convert into one of the first and most successful craft gin distilleries in the United Kingdom. Every evening and weekend for a year, Tom and his team could be found sawing, hammering, planting and planning. He’d had the idea to build a botanical garden at the heart of his family farm, and he was determined to see it through.

For Tina, it was a no-brainer. “My Mam had a beehive at home on the farm in Dublin,” she says. “Once they even swarmed up into the roof of the house! There was a connection there, and the idea just seemed to flow so well with the hedgerows on Falls Farm, and how everything we need to flavour all of our gins we owe to the work of bees.” There weren’t many gins you could drink neat,” she explains. “There were hints of growth, but nobody expected it to be as massive as it is now.” But, the more they learned, the more distilling gin took centre stage. And after a bit of research, they became convinced that making gin – or “the world’s best-tasting perfume”, as Tom calls it – was the way forward. As a farmer’s son, agricultural college seemed a natural enough next step after school. But little did Tom Warner know that the straightforward decision to attend agricultural college would take his life in a new and amazing direction. After graduation Tina toiled away in the City, while Tom worked all hours at a fresh produce importer.

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To top it off, we rescue citrus peel that would have been destined for landfill, which gives our London Dry its bright burst of flavour that you legends love!

It was also here where Tom met his wife Tina, herself a farmer’s daughter whose interests and skills had taken her instead to the world of high finance. The pair met when Tom was visiting one of his classmates. Strange as it sounds, now that Warner Edwards is synonymous with the craft gin movement, distilling spirits wasn’t the first idea Tom had for the business. In fact, it wasn’t even the second. But at that time, Tina says, gin was barely on the map. As Tom explains, “There are a lot of gins where people are trying to make statements, and they become a palate killer. Honeybee Gin is quite a big gin in terms of its citrus and floral notes, but we distilled it very slowly. That makes it fresh and drinkable – a zippy, light gin that’s a strong favourite for us over the summer.” It’s a really hard industry,” says Tom of his life before gin. “I was bringing pineapples to the UK from all sorts of exotic countries and you want to work hard, but for yourself, so that was the entrepreneurial moment – we said, ‘Let’s start a company!’.” All distillers want to do all day every day is make new recipes,” Tom laughs. “We want to make cool liquids! We don’t have to worry about selling a certain number of cases like the big boys do. We can make a flavour without focusing on shareholders or overheads – it’s about exciting ourselves and our customers, and giving people the best drinking experiences possible.”But all of the effort – the holidays spent with a hammer in hand, and the long nights willing plants to grow – have more than paid off. Because now Tom and Tina can spend the beautiful English summer in a botanical garden abuzz with bumblebees, butterflies and the incredible aroma of herbs and flowers. Just the second special edition in the Warner Edwards Botanical Garden range (it joins lemon balm-based Melissa Gin on the roster) will this Honeybee Gin be the last amazing flavour to come out of Curiosity? Certainly not – and with a gorgeous garden bursting with flavours and aromas to try, you can bet that the next Warner Edwards outing won’t play it safe, either. of 588 respondents said they preferred Warner's London Dry recipe to their regular gin in our taste test research conducted between 26.04.21 and 07.05.21. The other 11.1% are probably no fun at parties anyway. Not bragging but... A huge 31 botanicals go into The Botanist, including some native to Islay. The full list of botanicals is as follows: angelica root, apple mint, birch leaves, bog myrtle leaves, cassia bark, chamomile, cinnamon bark, coriander seed, creeping thistle flowers, elder flowers, gorse flowers, heather flowers, hawthorn flowers, juniper berries, lady’s bedstraw flowers, lemon balm, lemon peel, liquorice root, meadow sweet, orange peel, oris root, peppermint leaves, mugwort leaves, red clover flowers, tansy, thyme leaves, water mint leaves, white clover, wood sage leaves. Say chin chin with our fabulous collection of gin. If you love a classic G&T, get your hands on your favourite gin brand, and don't forget the tonic water. And of course, grab some limes too. If you don't have a favourite brand, try a variety before making your mind up. Our gin miniatures are great way to sample our range of brands and flavours. You’ll also find the right gin glass from our glassware collection.

Tom says, “I wanted to make a gin with a big citrus hit, to have the nectar interacting with the citrussy notes. It’s the craziest gin, and it was hard to distil because of the sheer variety of botanicals.”Most of the ingredients are grown a short stomp from the distillery, because fresh botanicals taste...well, better. We harvest the likes of Lavender, Angelica root and Lemon Verbena with our own, not-so-fair, farming hands. To celebrate our Rhubarb Gin's famous flavour, we have enlisted the help of acclaimed lexicographer SUSIE DENT, to pen a 'Rhubarb Tongue Twister' that will give drinkers THE ULTIMATE taste experience through the preparation of the palate. Personalisation is available on the following 70cl Gins; Harrington Dry Gin, London Dry Gin, Lemon Balm Gin, Honeybee Gin, Elderflower Gin, Rhubarb Gin, Raspberry Gin, Sloe Gin, Spring Blossom, Strawberry & Rose Gin and Christmas Cake Gin