Small-Batch Gin Is Back, Minus the Bathtub

Standing on a quiet residential street in London’s Chiswick neighborhood, there’s little sign you’re at the edge of a gin revolution. Behind a locked metal gate topped with barbed wire is a rundown parking garage. At the back of this building spirits maker Sipsmith has quietly installed a still it has christened Constance. Soon she’ll be joined by the company’s original pair, Prudence and Patience, as Sipsmith moves its home to this bigger site to produce brands such as V.J.O.P.—Very Junipery Over Proof gin—using the first new copper stills to work in London in more than 200 years.

“Gin has had a very peaky-trough kind of existence: It’s come back and forward in fashion,” Sipsmith co-founder Sam Galsworthy says. “Vodka came in through the ’80s and ’90s and gin was pretty uncool, a pretty dour spirit, and there wasn’t a great deal of premiumization going on.”