How a Cornish distillery is reinventing a classic French aperitif

The founder of artisanal Tarquin’s Gin and the Southwestern Distillery is attempting to shift a nation from the traditional meat and potato filled pasty to his incarnation of the aniseed flavoured pastis

Who needs Provence when you’ve got aniseed tipples made in Wadebridge?

Cornish gin, sure. There can’t be many corners of the globe nowadays which don’t have an artisan gin maker or three. Cornwall has six or seven, though only Tarquin’s, the first, can boast Best Gin Award 2017 from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the Oscars of hooch. But Cornish Pastis? When I ask, even the barmaid in Wadebridge’s White Lion directs me across the road to the pastry-laden shelves of the Cornwall Pasty company.

Just outside Wadebridge, on a high plateau of expansive crop fields, giant wind turbines and the distant view of the sea, Tarquin Leadbetter welcomes me to his Southwestern Distillery. The pasty connection was fun at first, he says, but he’s about to change the smart pea-green labels to read simply Pastis. Tarquin’s is far from a novelty for joke postcards, having itself won a Double Gold Award in San Francisco in 2016, the year of its creation. A secondary product of the big ex-cowshed distillery on a farm-turned-mini industrial estate, Tarquin’s Cornish Pastis is produced, like the gins, in small batches of three hundred bottles, in rare old fashioned Spanish flame-fired copper pot stills. It was first distributed from the boot of his car and latterly by a five-strong professional sales team.

Devon-born, a politics and economics graduate from Bristol University, but also a Cordon Bleu trained chef, Leadbetter gave up a City job in emerging markets analysis six years ago to invest a small bequest in his dream business: something in the food world. It was the beginning of the artisan gin boom, and Leadbetter joined in, using trial and error and a toy-like mini still to refine his recipe. Things went well from the start. “I was lucky to be the first in Cornwall,” he comments, “I got a really good local reception.” He’s doubled production every year since. This month, he’s got a big new still ready to go on line and a new head distiller about to join the ranks – ex-Bombay Sapphire no less, but conveniently for Southwestern Distillery, a sea and surf fan.

It was experimenting with the various herbs and plants he uses for gins, specifically fennel, the cousin of aniseed which defines a pastis, that started Leadbetter thinking. The blend he developed uses also – among numerous other ingredients – orange peel, and, a unique local touch, gorse picked from the cliffs down the road at Constantine Bay.

Leadbetter with the new still, ready to begin production

To road-test his pastis, Leadbetter directs me to a rambling stone inn in the delightful little village of Saint Tudy. All the usual Cornish gastro-star suspects use Tarquin’s products, including Nathan Outlaw at Port Isaac and Rick Stein just down the road in Padstow. Frankly I’d rather drown myself in the Camel Estuary than spend an evening in tripper-clogged summertime Padstow, so the Saint Tudy Inn is perfect. Furthermore, the proprietor/chef Emily Scott and manager/barman Alex Rowland have been primed by Leadbetter to provide me with some tasting drinks and dishes.

The first point to note is that millennial consumption, as Leadbetter says, is not the traditional southern French pastis and water, but heavily skewed towards use in cocktails; with interest in pastis benefiting from the cult status attached to its loucher relative, absinthe. So out goes my mental cliché of a hybrid Cornish-Provencale tableau, with weather-beaten seadogs in striped jerseys sipping tumblers of cloudy liquid while following the pétanque on their iPhones.

Tarquin’s range (left-right): the Sea Dog Navy Strength Gin, Cornish Gin, Cornish Pastis

Instead, a smart and pristine bar/restaurant interior with matching clientele and a succession of multi-hued, multi-ingredient tipples concocted by Rowland, a veteran of the booming cocktail culture of Polzeath. The least challenging is a pleasant aperitif of sparkling South African wine just tinted with pastis. The most striking an outsize wine goblet – Tarquin’s own trademark glassware – crammed with ice and shocking pink liquid, a little flame-filled passionfruit shell coracle bobbing on the surface. This is a Rick Grimes, a modification of a classic Zombie tiki drink (ie Polynesian-themed tropical cocktail), named in homage to the protagonist of Rowland’s favourite TV series, The Walking Dead. Nice work on both linguistic and alcoholic grounds.

And so to the kitchen’s input. The classic use of pastis in French cuisine is, of course, with fish, which suits Cornwall’s own piscine slant perfectly. Scott already uses Pernod in her fish stew, but is changing to Tarquin’s for the softer, sweeter taste. The stew is actually too tomato-heavy for this distinction to be apparent, and the better elements of the tasting menu are the subtler ones, particularly some excellent scallops with sparing hints of n’duja and pastis, and a sirloin steak finished with deliciously savoury garlic and pastis butter. To follow there’s good pastis ice cream and, yes, a pastis Espresso Martini from Rowland. By which time I consider I’ve earned a good night’s kip. And no pastis in my morning tea, please, not even ablaze in a floating passionfruit coracle.

Recipe for a Rick Grimes

25ml Tarquin’s Cornish Gin
25ml Tarquin’s The Seadog Navy Strength Gin
12.5ml Cointreau
12.5ml Tarquin’s Cornish Pastis
25ml Vanilla Sugar Syrup (Homemade)
25ml Fresh Lime Juice
25ml Fresh Lemon Juice
25ml Edmond Briottet Passionfruit Liqueur
3 Dashes of Angostura Bitters
A whole passionfruit

Finished with a half passionfruit shell filled with a blend of Cornish Pastis and The Seadog Navy Strength Gin, set on fire and dusted with icing sugar.

Buy Tarquin’s Cornish Pastis 70cl from Amazon £35.86, Master of Malt £35.57