Mountain flavours add a special twist to South African craft gin craze
Piling in for after-work drinks, a couple of dozen people pore over the menu at Mother’s Ruin, a speciality gin bar in Cape Town, where homegrown varieties are making a mark on the global scene. The menu is a daunting tome of 144 gins from around the world, more than 20 of them South African and steeped in the flavours of the country’s coastal mountains. "Those are very popular — all the foreigners who come here want to see what gins SA has to offer," said part owner Will Pretorius, whose favourite is A Mari, a variety from Cape Town distilled with seawater. "Gin around the world is starting to have a moment and SA has jumped on the bandwagon," said gin maker Lucy Beard. In 2015, her gin distillery, Hope on Hopkins, was the first to be licensed in Cape Town, just as the drink began to make a stir. Small gin distilleries soon began popping up in and around Cape Town and quite a few on wine farms, too, she said. Formerly lawyers based in London, Beard and partner Leigh Lisk, who are b...
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