Some spirits begin with a recipe; others begin with a place. Over the past year, I have found myself creating not one but two spirits that belong — almost inevitably — to Hereford Cathedral. One grows out of the cloister and cathedral gardens I’ve known for decades. The other came unexpectedly from the pages of a book written next door to my own home.

Together they form a pair: the Garden and the Library, two halves of the same story, two expressions of the heritage, beauty, and imagination woven through this remarkable place.

Cloister Garden Gin – A spirit rooted in the place I call home

My connection with Hereford Cathedral goes back nearly thirty years. My husband is the Organist here, and I’ve lived in the Cathedral Close for most of my adult life. I made my very first batch of gin in my kitchen just a few doors away. I had no idea then that Ludlow Gin — and later Ludlow Distillery — would grow into what they are today. But the roots go right back to this place: the Close, its gardens, its peace, its daily rhythms.

Walking through the cathedral gardens, you can easily catch the smell of herbs, the green, slightly resinous scent of fig leaves, or the delicate sweetness of mulberry in late summer. These plants have quietly grown here for generations, tended by gardeners and shaped by centuries of Cathedral life.

These became the foundation of Cloister Garden Gin. They were joined by rose geranium, cassia, sweet oranges, and the almost-liturgical warmth of frankincense and myrrh. The result is a gin deeply connected to this particular pocket of earth — reflective, aromatic, balanced, and quietly distinctive.

For me, distilling is in many ways a musical act. Before I became a distiller, I was also an organist — the 52nd Organist of Ludlow Parish Church since 1492. Gin, like music, relies on harmony: the interplay of boldness and subtlety, tension and release. Cloister Garden Gin became a kind of “choral harmony in a bottle”: individual botanicals blending into something unified and resonant.

A forgotten local history: the lost Hereford gin distillery

Few people realise that Hereford once had its own gin distillery, just a stone’s throw from the Cathedral. In the 19th century, small-scale distilling flourished in the city, shaped by its markets and its orchards. That heritage has largely been forgotten — but Cloister Garden Gin restores a small but meaningful part of that story.

In some ways, creating this cathedral gin felt like giving voice to something that had been silent for over a century.

The whisky story begins in an unexpected place: the Library

If the gin came from a place I knew intimately, the whisky came from somewhere I thought I understood — until the moment I realised I didn’t.

When I visited the Cathedral Library recently to discuss the gin project, I noticed an illustrated plate from The Herefordshire Pomona — the great 19th-century monograph on the apples and pears of the county. I knew the Pomona by reputation, but not its full story.

It was compiled by Dr Robert Hogg and Dr Henry Graves Bull, the latter living in Harley Court, the house next door to mine. The Pomona was created between 1876 and 1884, published in seven parts, and later collected into a two volumes by Jakeman & Carver in 1885. Its exquisite plates were painted by Bull’s daughter, Edith Bull.

Turning the pages alongside the librarians, I suddenly saw names — Foxwhelp, Dabinett, Stoke Red — written in elegant script. These are the same apples used by my friend and collaborator Tom Oliver, the internationally renowned cidermaker whose work appears in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world.

Royal Cider: the spark from the past

Several years ago, Tom and I became fascinated by a reference to “Royal Cyder”, published in 1684 in Richard Haines’ Aphorisms on Cider. Haines describes an extraordinary, almost mythical cider — powerful, clear, refined — crafted from the finest apples and matured so beautifully he claimed it rivalled the greatest French wines.

It was a challenge too tempting to resist.

Tom created a cider inspired by that description, using Dabinett and Foxwhelp apples. I distilled some of that cider, and the two liquids were united to mature for a year in a rum cask. The result was a cider of remarkable richness and complexity.

When the cider was bottled, we were left with the empty cask, still fragrant with orchard fruit, honey, rum and oak. It felt like an invitation. So I filled it with our own single malt whisky, quadruple-distilled on England’s only wood-fired whisky still — a method that produces an exceptionally clean, expressive spirit.

At the time, it was simply a beautiful collaboration between orchard and still.

What I realised in the Library was far more profound:

The very apples listed in the Herefordshire Pomona went into Tom’s Royal Cider.
The cask that held that cider now finishes our whisky.
And the book that preserves those apple varieties was written next door to where I now live.

Some stories are engineered. Others reveal themselves. This was very much the latter.

Herefordshire Royal Cider Cask Whisky – the First Release

The librarians mentioned, almost wistfully, that they had always dreamt of having a whisky connected to the Library’s story. Suddenly everything aligned: the heritage, the cask, the orchards, the manuscript, the people. And so, this special cask finish was born:

Herefordshire Royal Cider Cask Whisky — First Release

A limited edition of just 100 individually numbered bottles, marking the 140th anniversary of the Pomona’s collected publication (1885–2025).
It is the first English cathedral whisky, created with an English distillery.
It represents a rare meeting of:
the written cider heritage preserved in the Cathedral Library
the living cider heritage expressed in Tom Oliver’s orchards
the modern craft of whisky-making in the Welsh Marches

This single malt will be available by preorder, with early December delivery. With such a small release, there will be a two-bottle limit per household. Our first whisky, released in 2018, sold 400 bottles in under three minutes — so demand is likely to be high.

Why these spirits matter to Hereford

Hereford has always been a city of orchards, gardens, manuscripts, makers, growers, musicians, and storytellers.

These two spirits reflect that:

Cloister Garden Gin expresses the quiet beauty of the Cathedral gardens — the scents of the Close and the daily life of the precinct.
Herefordshire Royal Cider Cask Whisky expresses the orchard heritage of the county, the scholarship of the Library, and the creativity of modern cider and whisky makers.

Together, they honour the two great treasures of the Cathedral:
the cloisters and the gardens
the library and the Herefordshire Pomona
the natural and the cultivated
the written and the crafted

And for me personally — someone who has lived beside the Cathedral for decades and who has blended sounds as a musician and now blends spirits as a distiller — it feels like a coming together of every part of my life: music, place, craft, heritage, and story.

A celebration for Advent

Both spirits will be launched during Advent 2025, a moment of beginning, reflection, and gathering.

The gin will be available from late November.

The whisky will follow in early December as a First Release limited edition.

They are not simply drinks. They are expressions of place, shaped by gardens, orchards, manuscripts, and memory — a tribute to the Cathedral’s beauty, heritage, and people, and to the extraordinary rediscovery that brought this unique whisky expressions story to life.

Reserve your bottle of whisky here!

Buy your bottle of gin here!