Keeping Up With Rick Stein 1 - Cornish Potato Vodka

Like many people, I am really enjoying Rick Stein’s Cornwall series on BBC television. I think he’s a good presenter - partly because he always seems to know what he is talking about and partly because he just seems to be a jolly nice bloke.

I have had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple of times for the newspaper, but only on the phone - my huge regret is that after his producer David Pritchard died I was set to go to Cornwall to interview Rick in order to write a big tribute to the man who’d produced all his TV programmes from the year dot. Alas, the interview was called off pretty much last minute because apparently Rick had a business meeting - which I found a little disappointing. We were the only paper ever likely to give David - and his work - such a big double page spread.

I’ll put the interview I once did with David up here on the website one day soon as a podcast.

Anyway, the one thing I have noticed about the new Cornwall, series is that just about everywhere Rick goes, I have been before. At least half the people he’s interviewed have been featured by me in the Western Morning News down the years - which is only to be expected because Cornwall is not the biggest of counties…

Here, for example, is a news piece I wrote the Cornish potato vodka maker Steve Dustow after I visited him a few years ago

Cornwall is about to get its first gin and vodka distilling operation complete with high-tech equipment and a visitor centre - and it’s all happening in the middle of a potato farm.

Steve Dustow, who has been making the now well known Cornish Aval Dor vodka from his farm’s potatoes, will be opening the doors to the new distilling project in the next few weeks.

“In 2010 my brother and I dreamed up the idea of having a distillery on the farm, but then realised it was going to be pretty difficult,” Steve told me. “After that I was taking our potatoes, our water, our bottles up to an expert company - and ultimately they would do the distilling all the way up in Cambridgeshire. 

“It allowed us to test the market, give us more confidence and build relationships in the business, while we evolved this project in the background,” Steve continued. 

“It took a bit longer than anticipated - eight years, in fact - but we got a grant to do the project from the Cornwall Development Company South Eastern Local Action Group which is all about farm diversification and job creation, and that really helped.”

It’s been a steep learning curve for Steve who has had to thoroughly understand the complexities of distilling alcohol as well has successfully pass through numerous legal hoops in order to bring the project to where it is now. 

“The equipment we’ve got is state of the art - but you still need to know what you are doing because it is very volatile stuff,” he said as the new stainless steel equipment was hard at work distilling a local Cornish cider, which Steve is making into an apple based gin.

Steve says there’s one other still operating commercially in Cornwall - but he believes that no one else west of the Tamar is going the extra mile and distilling pure alcohols like gin or vodka. Creating something like a brandy from a basic drink like cider is one thing - but repeating the process so that you get totally clear 96% alcohol is another job entirely. 

Most new gin-makers buy in industrially made alcohol and then add flavours with the help of ‘botanical’ ingredients like juniper to give their product a USP.

Steve believes in going the whole hog himself in what he calls a “plough to bottle” process.

Having made his own 96% clear alcohol which is far too strong for anyone to enjoy, Steve then dilutes the product by using spring water from his family’s Colwith Farm, in the hills inland of Fowey. That creates a smooth and sophisticated drink like Aval Dor vodka - but gins are more complex again because they are flavoured with “botanicals”.

“We will be making both our vodka and gin here,” Steve told me. “I call it from plough to bottle. In the wine industry they call it single estate. To do everything on one site - like grow the crops (which my brother and father do),  cook them in a mash tub to make your own ‘wine’, distil that into pure alcohol, secondary distil it into gin, age it, bottle it, source your own water from your own ground... 

“That is 100 per cent authenticity and that is what we are really proud of doing.”