Our January 2021 Gin of the Month is the perfect way to start the new year!

With its snow-capped fells and romantic history, the Lake District has captured the imagination of poets, novelists and artists alike. Most recently, it’s served as a muse for the distillers behind Pennington’s Lakeland Moon Snowfell Gin, the beautiful craft gin that our members can find in their January 2021 Gin of the Month box.

A land of lakes and tarns, fells and mountains, shepherds and poets, the Lake District is a place of sublime beauty. While it may be most famous for its summer daffodils, some consider this wilderness at its most beautiful in wintertime, when the fells sloping down to the lakes are blanketed in snow.

It’s the old market town of Kendal, known as the gateway to the Lakes, which January’s Gin of the Month calls home. Here, Mike Pennington’s family have been living and working for generations. Since the late 1800s, the Pennington family — which has counted preachers, publicans and public servants amongst its ranks — has been a cornerstone of the Kendal community. Quite literally, in fact — many of the houses lining Kendal’s historic streets were built using stones from the family’s quarry.

All those centuries of history have culminated in the Lakeland Moon Snowfell Gin in our January 2021 Gin of the Month box. Handcrafted in Kendal by Mike, his partner Annie and her son Tim, this exclusive edition captures the essence of their beloved home — not least because it’s key botanical is Cumbrian juniper, harvested under the light of a full moon.

Here’s how the Penningtons captured the essence of their ancestral home in a beautiful spirit.

No visit to the Lake District is complete without a taste of Kendal Mint Cake, the peppermint-flavoured tablet created (quite by accident!) by a local confectioner in the mid-1800s.

Mike grew up on the very street where this iconic sweet was first made and has fond memories of making it with his grandfather as a boy. They would carefully parcel up their sweet treat and take it on hikes up the steep fells, enjoying it as they looked out over the glimmering lakes and rugged mountains.

Fast forward to 1990, and Mike was all grown up. Like his forebears, he’d become a pillar of the Kendal community. But while they’d been preachers, quarry masters and mayors — Mike counts two former Mayors of Kendal in his family tree — he’d gone in a different direction. Mike decided that hospitality was his calling. Specifically, he ran one of Kendal’s most beloved bars: Burgundy’s.

When Mike first opened Burgundy’s Bar in 1986, he wanted to create a place full of personality, where locals could gather on frosty winter nights for good drinks and good company. When his partner Annie came into his life, she befriended the locals that Mike had served for decades and supported him in the many hours he continued to work behind the bar.

But it wasn’t just families and lifelong friendships that began at Burgundy’s – it was also the place where Mike began crafting original recipes, starting with a quintessentially Kendalian liqueur. One night behind the bar, Mike found himself thinking back to those walks with his grandfather. What, he thought, if he could transform Kendal Mint Cake into a drink?

Through trial, error and a dash of intuition, Mike managed to create a liqueur that would go on to become the toast of the town.

While tourists and locals alike asked Mike and Annie a thousand times over to bottle their minty, chocolatey liqueur, it wasn’t until the winter of 2015 that they shared it with the world.

When a Burgundy’s regular told them that a stall at the local Christmas market had become available, Mike and Annie decided to have a go at selling their liqueur. For weeks they worked till midnight, crafting, bottling and labelling Kendal Mint Cake Liqueur by hand.

Their market stall was a rousing success, and Annie and Mike were pleasantly surprised when local businesses from around the Lake District began getting in touch, asking how they could stock the liqueur.

And so, to the delight of Burgundy’s regulars, Pennington’s Spirits & Liqueurs was born, and before they knew it, Annie and Mike’s side business was snowballing into something bigger than they could have ever imagined.

It wasn’t long before Pennington’s liqueurs were winning awards left, right and centre, but Mike and Annie weren’t content to rest on their laurels.

In 2016 they set their sights on gin, which Mike had enjoyed since he was a young man.

From the get-go one thing was clear in their minds: they wanted the recipe to be simple enough that the starring botanical – juniper – could really shine.

Annie couldn’t agree more. As a holistic therapist, she’s interested in natural ingredients and what it takes to make the most of them. She wanted the drinkers of their gin to experience Cumbrian juniper at its best, so for inspiration, she turned to her well-thumbed volume of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Published every August since the 1700s, the Old Farmer’s Almanac is a reference book containing a mixture of weather forecasts, planting charts, astronomy, folklore and recipes.

When it came to juniper, the Old Farmer’s Almanac had clear advice: to capture juniper berries at their juiciest, most flavourful and aromatic, they must be harvested during the full moon.

With the fresh flavour profile of Cumbrian juniper in mind, Mike and Annie went about creating the recipe for their flagship gin.

One thing was for certain: they wanted to keep the list of botanicals short rather than adding a cacophony of competing notes.

Once they had perfected their recipe, Mike went to work on his copper still using traditional distillation methods that had been practised since the 19th century.

The final result was Lakeland Moon Gin. Ultimately, what made Mike and Annie most proud of the gin they had made wasn’t the flavours or mouthfeel (though those were pretty exquisite), or even the awards it went on to win, but the chance to capture the spirit of Kendal in a bottle.

When Craft Gin Club founders John and Jon asked Mike to create a special-edition gin for Craft Gin Club members, he was determined that lightning should strike twice.

Mike and Annie wanted to make something as impressive as their flagship gin. Mike used the same Cumbrian juniper and classic methods used in their signature gin so that the new edition had a definite family resemblance. But by changing the balance of botanicals and introducing earthier, more herbaceous flavours into the blend, he created something that would transport the drinker to the snow-topped fells of the Lake District.

Thanks to Mike’s carefully-honed skills as a distiller, the bottle that our members can box this January captures how magical the Lake District is in winter. Made with the wisdom carefully collected by generations of Cumbrians, this delicious spirit allows the quality of its botanicals to shine. It’s the perfect gin to toast a new year filled with promise!

The labels emblazoned on the bottles of both Lakeland Moon Gin and Lakeland Moon Snowfell Gin are created by local artists.

Try out Pennington’s Lakeland Moon Snowfell Gin in our amazing January 2021 Perfect G&T and our January 2021 Cocktail of the Month. They are both fantastic ways to enjoy this incredible gin!