Unleash your inner alchemist at the Inverroche Gin Academy

If you really want to have the most fun you can with your clothes on, you have to see yourself as an insane alchemist who is willing to let loose with their potions and magical tinctures. Mini copper pot stills, a mortar and pestle, measuring jugs in various sizes and a keen sense of learning are all you need to produce a bespoke gin, with its own name, scent, flavour profile and bottle contouring.

After pounding botanicals such as angelica root, orange zest, juniper, coriander and cassia, followed by gently massaging cardamom, blackcurrant, fennel and pink peppercorn, I was left with a floral and herbal mixture that needed to be distilled on a hot flame.

This is the time when you savour Inverroche signature cocktails, take in the vast art collection at Ellerman House and enjoy gin-inspired canapés, while the majestic Atlantic Ocean crashes below.

You will not be able to help but feel in the upper echelon as you use words such as “distillate” (the liquid product condensed from vapour during the distillation process) and “nosing”, which is smelling a gin’s aroma.

To wrap up the nearly three-hour experience, you get to bottle and label your masterpiece, after coming up with an ingenious name for it. I went with “Abaphantsi”, which is a Xhosa word for “ancestors”, an ode to way too much impepho that I blended. I was also too generous with my pink peppercorns as my gin ended up looking like methylated spirits.

The Inverroche Gin Academy is also available in Johannesburg (Four Seasons Hotel, The Westcliff), Stillbaai (Inverroche Distillery) and KwaZulu-Natal (The Capital Zimbali). To book at the Ellerman Hotel, e-mail restaurant@ellerman.co.za or call 021-430-3200. The experience costs R1,500 per person.