Craft distiller brings the zesty flavours of Sorrento to the Causeway Coast

Based at Portballintrae, Dunluce Distillery has created a delicious version of what is Italy’s second-most popular liqueur that’s made from the zest of Amalfi lemons and traditionally served chilled as an after-dinner digestivo.

The local limoncello is the brainchild of distiller Simon Hogg (42), the creator of a novel gin that includes sea kelp from the Antrim coastline among the botanicals for a distinctive flavour. The lemons are imported for the Amalfi coast for the distillery by Sydney B Scott, a fruit and vegetable business near Coleraine.

“I’ve always loved the rich flavours of zesty lemon in limoncello and decided to develop my own on the back of my success in creating a small batch gin,” Simon explains. “Feedback has been encouraging from the outlets which began selling the limoncello. I was also attracted to the liqueur because there’s no-one else producing it here.”

Father of three, Simon set up a small distillery to make gin in a converted room at the family home in Portballintrae. Distilling is a part-time business – his day job is in the local hospitality industry.

Setting up the distillery and producing The Shore Born, his first gin, was a dream come true.

“Ever since I was a young man, I’ve been a huge fan of gin. The complexity of the botanicals really intrigued me,” he continues.

Gin is also part of his family heritage.

“My dad loves a gin and tonic, his father, my grandfather, also loved gin and was a keen producer of wine. As a young boy, I remember being fascinated by the bottles in his attic and watching in amazement as the yeast respired and bubbled the carboys. There was something about the magic of the process,” he says.

Robert Taylor, Simon’s great uncle, was the manager of the old Coleraine Whiskey Distillery and his grandparents supplied the nearby Old Bushmills Distillery with barley in the 1960s from their farm Ballindreen.

His first job was in a water bottling factory during the school holidays at the age of 14.

“Little did I know back then, that my years at Antrim Hills Spring Water would provide me with some valuable experience in bottling, the skills required to bring a product to market and also to ensure quality control in each successive batch. I learned about labelling, bottle filling, recipes and packaging, right down to capsule sealing the bottles by hand with heat guns, a technique I still utilise to this day with my gin and limoncello,” he explains.

This experience led Simon to begin studying the craft of gin distillation in 2017.

“I’ve honed my olfactory senses over early mornings and late nights. I’ve had successes and failures but I’ve kept going, absorbing knowledge and experience at every turn. I was always a huge fan of the process, and for me, distilling is not just a science but a little bit of magic too,” he says.

He’s learned by experimenting over the years, “producing wine, beer, rum, brandy and rhubarb gin all for my own consumption and for some close friends too”.

“I knew that I wanted to produce my own gin commercially and so, when Covid-19 locked the country down, I had some spare time on my hands,” he explains.

“I’ve worked in hospitality throughout my business life, including The Bushmills Inn for over 11 years, and had a fair idea what a really good gin looked and tasted like.”

He acquired a still and, in 2021, set up Dunluce Distillery. He then sourced botanicals to fine tune his unique recipe, by first in small batches and then proving the recipe could be scaled up for mass production.

“The botanicals in the gin include juniper berries, orris root, coriander seeds, hibiscus, lavender and angelica root. My goal was to produce a quality gin with my own flavour profile.

"I wanted a spirit that everyone could enjoy, a spirit that represented the north coast, the people here now and those born by the shore,” adds Simon.