Interviewer -
For many of us, the idea of distilling gin is a mix of alchemy and mysticism. But for Dr. Anne Brock, the head distiller at Bombay Sapphire, it is pure science and sensory memory. As the latest custodian for the brand, Brock has spent the last four years leading a team of 16 distillers at the brand's Laverstoke Mill Distillery, but maintaining the core expression, while adding in innovation, isn't always easy. We talked to Brock about creativity, agility, and adding a little personality to an established brand.

Thank you for joining us, Anne.

Dr. Anne Brock
It’s lovely to be here.

Interviewer:
Now, you have an organic chemistry background. Do you feel that that gives you an edge when it comes to distilling?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I certainly feel that having an organic chemistry background has been hugely beneficial to me in my career as a distiller. The actual science that I was doing back when I was doing my PhD isn't applicable to gin, but the processes I was using in the lab and the logistics around creating products is absolutely analogous, and I do feel that it's a huge support to me.

Interviewer:
Which is more important, do you think, that chemical knowledge or your nose and sensory memory?

Dr. Anne Brock:
Well, it's really interesting, actually. It's something that I often think about in my day-to-day. What's more valuable to me, my scientific education or my nose? I think it depends where I was in my career. Certainly when I was starting out and I was building a distillery in London, it would've been my chemical knowledge that was most useful because I was trying to build a process that would create a gin and understanding the issues that could occur that if the process wasn't built correctly was really important. Whereas now, obviously I work at Laverstoke Mill in Hampshire, in England, and the distillery was built before I joined the company. For me, now it's my nose and my sensory memory. Bombay Sapphire is such a well-known gin, and people expect it to taste the same. That really falls on me.

Interviewer:
I imagine that must have been quite intimidating when you started in the role, the idea that people do expect it to taste the same every time.

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely. I think I was distilling a gin before, which had its fans, but they weren't quite as extensive as Bombay Sapphire's fans. It was something that I certainly thought about a lot before taking the role on. Part of my interview process for the role was actually a sensory test. I had to pass that before they'd even consider me for the role, obviously. One of the things that I benefit from a lot working at Bombay Sapphire though is the network of support I have. Although on site it comes down to me and my nose, and day-to-day, it's up to me to make sure the gin tastes the same, if we ever think we are deviating or if we ever perceive any fluctuations or changes due to changes in raw materials or changes in the process, I do have a huge, huge amount of support, starting firstly with the master of botanicals, Ivano Tonutti.

Interviewer:
I imagine that you could have distilled anything with your background. Why did you specifically choose gin?

Dr. Anne Brock:
Because I love gin. I think when you're a distiller or a blender, if you're working with a spirit you love, that's half the battle, though I'm very lucky. I get to try other spirits, obviously, in my job. I do love trying other spirits and learning about other spirits, but the bottle I'll pick up... In a moment that matters when I've sat with my family, I will pick up a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and I'll have a gin and tonic. Gin was a no-brainer for me. It was always gin.

Interviewer:
You mentioned the distillery that you set up in London, Bermondsey. How much of an adjustment was it to move from a small distillery like that to a brand of such renown as Bombay?

Dr. Anne Brock:
In some ways, it was huge, and in others, it wasn't. It was quite strange. When I was sort of getting up to go to my first day on the role, the thing I was most nervous about was actually driving to the distillery because I'd had to learn to drive for the job. It was one of the first times I'd driven after my driving test, so I was absolutely petrified about the drive to the distillery. I figured once I got to the distillery, I knew how to make gin, and it would be fine.
But I think it's obviously on a much bigger scale than the distillery I was working in before. I was the only distiller, and then I moved to leading a team. It's a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week site. The stills are always churning, even if I'm not on site. I think that was the biggest adjustment was trusting other people to continue the process when I wasn't around and trusting their noses because I can't be on site 24/7.

Interviewer:
No, no. Of course not. Out of curiosity, manual or automatic?

Dr. Anne Brock:
The process?

Interviewer:
No, no, no. The license, yes.

Dr. Anne Brock:
The drive? A manual.

Interviewer:
Which is the harder one to do.

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely. I was living in London. I hadn't moved out to Hampshire yet. I was actually learning to drive in London as well, which is not an easy prospect.

Interviewer:
No, that would be quite a thing, I imagine.
How difficult has it been to step into the shoes of the brand's past master distillers and play that part of guardian?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I think one of the great things about working for a brand like Bombay is it's known for the product and the bottle and the creativity of the brand rather than the person making it. In some ways, I didn't feel like suddenly the spotlights would be turned on me because the spotlight's always on the gin, which always makes it a lot easier when you're standing in the background of such a brilliant product like Bombay Sapphire. I think that I'm also lucky in the fact that through most of Bombay's history, there's been a consistent master of botanicals, Ivano Tonutti. I get to work closely with him. Learning from him and working alongside him means that I feel like I can pick up a lot about the product, about its history and its history of the way it's been made and any changes to production processes over time. In some ways, I feel like I've been supported through that by him.

Interviewer:
I suppose also he'd be able to give you a good head's up if growing conditions for botanicals have changed or...

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely.

Interviewer:
... rainfall or anything that would affect the flavour.

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely. As you can imagine with the changes in the planet's climates at the moment, harvest to harvest, it's very different for all our 10 botanicals. Obviously, the harvests take place at different times of the year in different parts of the world. One year, the juniper harvest might be great, but we'll be struggling with the angelica or the coriander. It's so important that Ivano and I continue to communicate about that. The switch between different harvest years is managed very, very carefully. As years go by, we are seeing more and more issues with growing conditions.

Interviewer:
Does that mean that you seek out new growers constantly, or you just deal with what you have, or how do you get around those inconsistencies?

Dr. Anne Brock:
One of the very unique things about Bombay Sapphire is our relationship with our growers. We work directly with them. We don't go through any commodities traders or brokers. Ivano has built up these relationships with our growers directly over 20 years of his career and has almost personal relationships with them. It's incredible that a brand as big as Bombay works in that way.
Now, obviously that means then when there are issues with the harvest, the growers are very well aware of what we need and will alert us early on to any issues so we can start to work with them to see if we can overcome it. How we overcome that will depend on the issue. We do work always with the same growers, and that's because as of this year, all our botanicals are now certified sustainable. That is not an easy thing to get through a process.

Interviewer:
No, of course.

Dr. Anne Brock:
It takes a long time to get that qualification. That's really important for Bombay, so we will always continue to work with the growers that Ivano has that relationship with.

Interviewer:
I imagine it must be difficult though, because you would be buying in such large quantities.

Dr. Anne Brock:
Yes.

Interviewer:
If a harvest fails or has massive problems, that could throw you completely, couldn't it?

Dr. Anne Brock:
Well, that's why we have to manage that risk carefully by... buy more in good years and ensuring that we have a good spread of supply, not just from a volume point of view, but across harvest as well. Whenever a harvest changes, it doesn't mean that we move from one vintage to the next like wine. There's always a blend of different harvests across the years in any bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

Interviewer:
Bombay was, of course, the first of the modern gins to feature botanicals, especially on the bottle, as well as the marketing material. Do you believe that it's that transparency that has helped propel the brand to its current level of popularity?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I certainly think that's played its part, because if you look at the popularity of smaller distilleries that are opening up, one of the things that consumers love about small brands is that level of transparency. Bombay, even at the size it is, has always had that commitment to transparency, and we always will. Every time we put out a new innovation, a new style of Bombay, then the botanicals on the side of the bottle get updated. We don't just include which botanicals go in. We state where we get them from as well, not down to the exact grower, but the country that they come from, because we think it's important for our consumers to understand that we want the very best for Bombay, and we go out to look for the very best in terms of its botanicals.

Interviewer:
There are, of course, a variety of different ways to create gin. Why do you believe that vapor infusion is the best?

Dr. Anne Brock:
It's very hard to say flat, "It's the best." I think that vapor infusion is certainly the best for the Bombay recipe. There are a number of different ways you can make gin, obviously, the classic steep and boil, vapor infusion, which Bombay has pioneered, and also you get cold distillation as well. It's just a diff different way of treating the botanicals to get different flavours. For Bombay, what we are looking for is a bright and balanced flavour profile because we want something that bartenders can pick up and use in any creation that they want and really put their creative mindset to the gin.
We get that through vapor infusion because it's a slightly more delicate way of treating the botanicals, resulting in a much more natural expression of the botanical flavours. I always like to think about it in terms of trying to explain it to people in terms of something like coffee. You take a coffee bean. You make an espresso. You make a pour over or a cold brew. With the same bean, you get three very different-tasting coffees. It's what the barista or the flavour the barista wants to present to the customer is the method by which he or she makes the coffee. We've chosen vapor infusion because we believe that it gives best flavour profile for Bombay Sapphire.

Interviewer:
Are there other aspects of the product that you've been allowed to tweak at all, or would you tweak things?

Dr. Anne Brock:
Yes, absolutely. I am not allowed to touch the recipe or change the flavour of the gin, obviously, because I think if I started to be creative with the Bombay Sapphire flavour profile, our passionate consumers would have something to say about that. But what I am allowed to do is, obviously, look at the processes we use in the distillery and make improvements. We've got an environmental continuous improvement in the distillery, and we will change the process to improve things for my distillers, to improve things from a sustainability perspective, to improve things from a capacity perspective. So, yes, there are elements that I can change, but the primary thing that I cannot change is that bright, balanced flavour profile of Bombay Sapphire.

Interviewer:
Now, you spoke a little bit about sustainability. How important do you think that is to modern gin production?

Dr. Anne Brock:
It's essential. I think that anyone setting up a distillery now should be looking at the most sustainable way that they can be creating their gin. For me, it's something that we take so seriously at the distillery. It's part of my everyday, not just in terms of monitoring the amount of energy or water we're using in our process, but also actively, on a daily basis, creating new ways of working or coming up with future plans for the distillery to drive that distillery towards net zero. The planet is so important to the world, to us, and we only have one of them. It's our duty to look after that.

Interviewer:
Can you give us some idea as to what future plans will be, what you will be doing over the next, say, five to 10 years to help that sustainability along?

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely. As I say, we're driving towards net zero. That's the most important thing now. We've got a quite ambitious target for that. One of the things I'm doing is I'm looking at alternative energy supplies. I'm looking at new technical processes, which can give us the energy that would power our stills. We're very, very lucky at the distillery. It was built in 2013. When it was built, the design won a BREEAM Award, which is a... It was the first distillery, I think, to win this environmental award for building design. We were built with solar panels in place. We were built with thermal-heat recovery. We were built with rainwater harvesting. We've got a turbine in our river. But between 2013 and 2021, there's obviously been huge changes in the technology.
What we don't want to do at the distillery is sit back and go, "Right. Well, we've put some solar panels in. That's fine. That's all right. We can just sit back, and we've done our bit." We're continually looking at new technologies coming out, so we will be upgrading those. We will be looking at how we can maximise the output of the solar panels, how we can maximise the output of the turbine. The rainwater harvesting actually is one of our really big sustainability measures. It sounds so, so simple, but it saves us a million litres of water a year, which is a huge amount.

Interviewer:
That is.

Dr. Anne Brock:
We're also looking at different ways we can change the production process, again, without changing the taste of Bombay Sapphire, but to make it a more sustainable process, get more gin out for less energy.

Interviewer:
Recently, the brand has been bringing out a number of limited-edition expressions. Which do you prefer, working on the established brand or creating these new taste flavours?

Dr. Anne Brock:
It's kind of what day of the week it is, is the question, but I think when I came into the role, I thought that my passion would be the innovation. That's the exciting bit, the playing with new flavours and putting your creative side of your brain to work. But actually, what surprised me when I started was how passionate I am about just the production of Bombay Sapphire and getting that consistency out. It's not as easy as saying, "We've set the recipe, and the stills are just going to run. It's all going to be fine." There's so much that goes into it that on a daily basis takes up my... It takes up my scientific brain and my nose, that really, I could happily just make Bombay Sapphire day in, day out, but being able to work on the innovation, obviously, it's really exciting, and it's interesting. I've been really lucky to be involved in some beautiful products recently.

Interviewer:
Now talk us through a bit of the process of creating those new expressions. Where does the inspiration for the flavours come from, and where do your ideas originate?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I think one of the really interesting things about working with a gin like Bombay Sapphire and trying to innovate within the flavour DNA of Bombay Sapphire is that it is such a balanced gin. If you add any new botanicals in, you're going to offset that balance, which you don't want to do. A lot of the inspiration is driven by a botanical that interests myself or Ivano, but also then how we balance that botanical within the Bombay Sapphire recipe. But also, it could be driven by the fact that we get an interesting botanical, or it could be driven by a need we see in the market. If we think that there's a need for a warm, bolder version of Bombay Sapphire, like, say, Sunset, we think, "Okay, we really want to do this. We really want to showcase this different aspect of Bombay Sapphire. How do we achieve that? What botanicals do we need to achieve that?' There's really two different ways you can come at it.

Interviewer:
You mentioned that these expressions need to work with the original Bombay Sapphire. Are you ever allowed to go completely off the reservation and not necessarily use the original as your base?

Dr. Anne Brock:
We have a number of different innovation sort of pipelines. We've got what we call our special editions, which is Bombay Sapphire Sunset Star, which is the Bombay Sapphire base with some additional botanicals, but one of the things we are pushing towards is... Well, we've just actually here in the UK launched Bombay Sapphire Premier Cru. That is a new expression of Bombay Sapphire, but it's also looking at working with the growers and highlighting the talent of the growers. It's really capturing that. Yes, there's a Bombay Sapphire base, but it's a bit left wing, because we've almost unbalanced that gin by putting lots of citrus in. We are also looking to be a bit more creative, because one of the things that makes Bombay Sapphire unique is its vapor-infusion process. One of the things we do want to do is start to explore that more and have the change in production process be the hero of the innovation rather than the new botanicals.

Interviewer:
When you're coming up with these new expressions, is there a particular, overarching direction that you're following, or can the ideas really come from anywhere and every idea is worth trying?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I think you can't do innovation without saying, "Every idea is worthwhile." If you put too strict limitations on yourself before you get creative, then you're not exploring every avenue. When we're coming up with a product, we will make a range, and we'll always have a bit of a wild card in there. Sometimes that wild card makes it to the end because it's not something that anyone thought would work, and it just works beautifully.

Interviewer:
The gin craze, especially in the UK, has been going for a while now. Do you think there's still a lot of room for innovation in gin?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I think there is, but I think it needs to be done in the right way. I think one of the things you often see when a spirit is really popular is people are trying to jump on the bandwagon, and they start to create products that aren't recognisably the spirit that is experiencing that huge popularity growth. We have seen that in gin, especially in the UK, and there are a number of gins now that if you gave them to me blind, I won't be able to taste the juniper. For me, I think, yes, absolutely there's still room for innovation in gin. One of the brilliant things about it is the flexibility in the category. But as an industry, we have to be careful that we respect what gin actually is and don't lose sight of what the spirit is because it is a beautiful spirit and we can innovate without moving away from that.

Interviewer:
In terms of the expressions and innovation that has been done during your time at the reins, what would you say would be your favourite

Dr. Anne Brock:
It's often the most recent one we've done, but actually Sunset for me is one that I really love. I think it's one of the innovations we've done where I've just not only loved the liquid, but I've really loved what the brand team have done with the bottle and all the messaging around it. It just works as a product and as a concept. It's something that I'm really proud of, but I also feel that it's something that is quite a bold gin for Bombay Sapphire. It's very spicy, and it's very warming. It just works so well. It adds this real different element to a number of my favourite cocktails. I've got a couple of bottles, actually, over on the shelf over that I'm really enjoying pouring and sharing with my friends.

Interviewer:
What is it do you think about Bombay Sapphire that really captures people's imagination?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I think it is that balanced flavour profile. I think it is the brightness of the botanicals. It's fact that it stands out on a shelf. The bottle just screams at you to pick it up, and then the gin you get inside is just beautiful. You can turn your hand to anything when creating cocktails with it.

Interviewer:
Do you ever create a gin from the end-use perspective? Do you consider the cocktails that these spirits might go into?

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely. You can't create a gin if you can't imagine a bartender using it. You also have to be conscious of creating the perfect, say, Negroni gin, but you can't just have it to work in a Negroni. It has to work in other cocktails as well. From the get-go, you are thinking about botanicals because... sorry, you're thinking about cocktails because as you are choosing your botanicals, there might be a botanical that really is quite jarring and doesn't work in any cocktails, at which point there's no point in making the gin. It stays front of mind throughout the whole process. Often, you'll be sipping some of the innovation products that you're coming up with, and you'll sip on it and you’ll think that, "I can imagine..." You're almost transported to being sat in a bar, drinking it in an Aviation or a French 75 or a martini. That really for me is when you know that you're getting somewhere and you're getting a gin that is recognisably a great product when you're transported to a bar as you taste it.

Interviewer:
If we could take you to a bar right now, what would you order?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I would order, I think, something like a Gimlet or Bee's Knees right now. It's quite early in the day

Interviewer:
Does that change, or are those go-to cocktails?

Dr. Anne Brock:
No, it changes all the time. I don't really have a go-to cocktail. It really depends on the time of year, the time of day, the bar I'm in as well. You go somewhere like the Connaught in London, then you're going to have a martini. Whereas you go somewhere else, somewhere like Tayer + Elementary, in London, you would take something off their menu because they're so creative and so different. For me, I like to be led by the bartender a lot as well, because you spend all these hours making the perfect gin, but when you hand it over to the bartender, what you want your gin to do is inspire creativity in them. If they've come up with a cocktail with your gin, honestly, there is no better cocktail. There's no cocktail that tastes better in the world than a cocktail that has been made specifically for your gin by a talented bartender.

Interviewer:
Excellent. Now, do you have a favourite bar?

Dr. Anne Brock:
The two I've just mentioned, actually, in London are the two I probably visit the most at the moment. But pre-COVID, obviously, I was very lucky, and I did some traveling with the brand. I've really enjoyed seeing bars in other countries. I did a bit of a tour of America, which was amazing. There were some fantastic bars out there that I was honoured to go to. Hopefully when things all calm down, I'll be able to travel again and start to explore what's going on in other countries, because I think it's really important for a distiller to go to bars and go and see what bartenders are doing with your products. Depending on where you are in the world, that's going to change because trends are quite different across the globe.

Interviewer:
Speaking of COVID, did you, like everybody else, expand your home-bartending skills?

Dr. Anne Brock:
To be honest, COVID was just such a strange time in the distillery. We obviously kept producing gin, but there was a lot of restrictions that came in, and a lot of my time was taken up, just making sure my team was safe. We also were able in the UK and I think across the world... Obviously, there was that huge shortage of sanitizer at the beginning of the pandemic. We started to make it at the distillery. With a skeleton crew, with production still running, we also had this almost secondary role of making bottling and shipping sanitizer to local care homes, local hospitals, local doctor surgeries, local schools. We were donating it all. That became a big part of my role as my second job was as a sanitizer supplier. I didn't have a huge amount of time at home, or I was pretty tired when I got home. What I did start to do was get into pre-batching my cocktails so that when I got home, it was all ready to go. I could just pour it into a glass, sit on my sofa, and take a moment to decompress from the day.

Interviewer:
No, that makes perfect sense. Take us through a typical day. What do you normally do?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I always say that it's very hard to say a typical day, because any day in a distillery is production-driven, and things might be happening within the process that change your plans for the day, depending on what's going on, but there is one constant in any of my days. I obviously arrive on site at about 8:00 AM in the morning, walk through, sign in, and go into the main courtyard of the distillery. The first thing I'll see is the beautiful glass houses at the distillery. I've been working at the distillery for over four years now, and it never gets old, seeing them. They look so different in any part of the day or night. They're just beautiful. Then I'll turn and go into the distillery.

Dr. Anne Brock:
First thing I'll notice is the smell in the distillery, because depending on where we are in the production process, the distillery will smell different, so I'll know immediately when I walk in where we are in the process. Then I go up and drop all my stuff off into my office. But the first thing I do before I've had a chance for any food or drink to mess with my sensory capabilities, I'll go to the lab and I'll nose the samples that we've made across the night and across the week. Any samples that are out for me to nose and taste and judge against the reference, I'll do that first. That continues throughout the day, and that is the one consistency in my day is checking the quality of the gin.

Interviewer:
What do you want people to take away from their experience with Bombay Sapphire?

Dr. Anne Brock:
I want them to love it. And I want them to appreciate the fact that it is a well-crafted, beautifully-balanced gin. It's not easy to achieve a gin like that. It's very easy to make a gin, but it is not easy to make a good gin. I think that Bombay Sapphire is truly unique in its flavour profile, in its balance, and in its consistency.

Interviewer:
Anne, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. If people want more information, they of course can go to the website, which is bombaysapphire.com, or connect with the brand via your socials.

Dr. Anne Brock:
Absolutely. Yes. Do connect with the brand via the socials, and you can always reach out to the distillery as well. the distillery has its own website and its own contact details. If there's any information you want to know about visiting Laverstoke or anything to do with the process, they can always reach out there.

Interviewer:
I was about to ask actually, are you guys back to doing tours of the distillery or...

Dr. Anne Brock:
We are, yes. We obviously had to shut down for a period of time, but they are back. The one change we have made is we used to take, I guess, through the still house so they'd just get a real sense of the size of the stills and the process. We don't do that at the moment to protect my team. There are large windows. You stand outside, and you look in. It's not quite the same, but it's still a fantastic experience. You do hear absolutely everything about our process and the way gin is made.

Interviewer:
That would be really fascinating. Again, thank you so much for taking the time

Dr. Anne Brock:
No problem at all. Anytime.

Interviewer:
Cheers.