Gustav Temple braves vintage petrol fumes, spiky juniper bushes and an uphill country walk to sample the new Levin Down Gin from the Goodwood Estate.
Scanning the Chichester railway car park for the promised ‘classic vehicle’ that would take us to Goodwood House, I didn’t spy any vintage Daimlers, Alvises or Bentleys. There was a WWII Land Rover 101 Forward Control utility vehicle with a couple of Land Girls standing around it, which I assumed was some sort of Goodwood staff transport. The outfit I had chosen, carefully considering the environment (country) and the task (gin journalism), consisted of a Walker Slater two-piece wool birdseye suit, cream linen waistcoat, TM Lewin pink shirt with contrasting white cuffs and collar, silk knitted striped tie and vintage grey trilby.
Five minutes later, eight of us well-attired journalists were rumbling along the A27 in the Land Rover, cramped in the back like Tommies going into battle, petrol fumes wafting in all the way. It turned out to be a glorious way to arrive at Goodwood House on the first day of their Revival motoring meeting. The fleet of parked Rolls Royces and Bentleys on the gravel were, we were informed, destined to deliver racing drivers and other motoring luminaries to the house. We were all there for much more important business: to attend the launch of Goodwood’s new Levin Down Gin. Our motoring moments behind us (or so we thought), we entered the house reeking of petrol and thirsty for coffee. More Land Girls joined us and handed out our day’s itinerary, before we were invited to mount our Land Rover again for a trip into the wilds of the Goodwood grounds to forage for juniper.
The juniper used in Levin Down Gin, or at least some of it, comes directly from the surrounding land, as does the chalk-filtered water used in distillation. Juniper berries are small, firm and black when ripe. If you can pluck one off the spiky bush without pricking your fingers and crush it in your hand, the juniper berry immediately releases the distinctive smell of gin. If you eat it and close your eyes, the full flavour of neat gin fills the mouth. Goodwood Gin adds eleven other botanicals, from coriander to Angelica root, and by the time we had been delivered back to Goodwood House in our now trusty Land Rover, we were ready to sample the results of all that juniper being synthesised into the house gin.
Served neat, Goodwood Gin packs a mighty punch, the twelve botanicals producing a complex, citrusy flavour rounded off with a 43.6% ABV alcohol content. Once tonic is added, the flavour bursts into the glass, in this case aided by gin-themed canapes, the standout one being nothing more complex than raw tomato with a gin jelly. A quick whizz around the house itself followed, gin and tonics in hand, to see the enormous ballroom laid for a grand dinner that night for all the motor racing folk. Since there was to be a Graham Hill Memorial race that weekend, I assumed that his son Damon, interviewed for CHAP Summer 22, would be among those present. We were shown the collection of Sevres Porcelain and the paintings by Cannaletto – the sort of stuff most of us have lying about the house.
By now it was three pm and there was even more in store for us. Goodwood Gin had taken the wise and timely decision to launch their gin on the first day of Goodwood Revival, where The Chap has staged our Olympiad many times. But instead of attacking each other with umbrellas while mounted on bicycles, we were squired to the new Levin Down Gin Bar just behind the paddock. Hop, Skip and G&T might have been more in keeping, although just a gin and tonic while watching vintage Bugattis revving up was more than adequate.
Since nearly every one of the 150,000 attendees at Revival is wearing period costume (or at least a passable semblance of it), added to the roar of pre-1965 petrol driven automobiles, with live music from swing bands and rockabilly quartets, it really is like walking around in the 1950s for a day. We posed for yet another group photograph as Spitfires loomed overhead and The Italian Job blared over the revellers on an enormous outdoor movie screen, before rumbling back to Chichester railway station in our now familiar Land Rover. By the end of the journey the gentlemen had learned that, in this particular case, ‘ladies first’ did not apply, since disembarking from said vehicle involved a rather ungainly dismount down a wooden stepladder. Letting the skirted ladies go first was definitely the gentlemanly thing to do.
