LoA chatted to Lucy Beard, who is the co-founder of Hope on Hopkins together with her husband Leigh Lisk, during a busy day at their exhibition stand at the recent Sanlam Handmade Contemporary Fair in Johannesburg. She shared the roller-coaster ride that is the startup experience, and how becoming an entrepreneur has its challenges, but is well worth the journey from a personal, life-enhancing perspective. Listen to our interview....

Lucy shares more about Hope on Hopkins....

Hope on Hopkins Distillery is a small artisanal distillery in the heart of Cape Town that prides itself on truly crafting its own spirits. Unlike many gin distillers we don’t buy in the base spirit to flavour, but prefer to make it ourselves, so that you know where it (and our carefully sourced quality ingredients) comes from. Using South African grown malted barley, we cook, ferment over several days and then triple distil to make our base neutral spirit, a Single Malt Vodka – some of which is bottled for sale. We then go on to distil a fourth time, allowing the alcohol vapours to infuse through select botanicals.

We are the proud owners of the first stills to be licensed by the City of Cape Town: Mildred and Maude, as well as our little experimental still.

We make our base spirit using 100% South African grown malted barley. Our gins are then infused using a range of botanicals including:

Juniper, an essential ingredient in all gins, currently sourced from Macedonia, where it is harvested from the hillsides once a year, the ripe berries beaten out of the trees. While juniper is available in South Africa, most of it doesn’t produce berries with enough essential oils to create great flavour
Angelica root, another botanical common to most gins, sourced from Belgium and responsible for marrying together the flavours of all the other botanicals used
Coriander, a favourite ingredient among distillers: the oil from the seed is the perfect blend for booze, faintly woody yet dominated by citrus flavours, which perfectly complements the juniper
Citrus, including organic lemon and orange zest from the Cederberg. Our peel is hand peeled and hung up to dry in the sun
Rosemary, grown in the garden of a friend in Oranjezicht.

Contact or follow Hope on Hopkins

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | EMAIL lucy@hopeonhopkins.co.za

Physical Address:
7 Hopkins Street, Salt River, Cape Town, South Africa