scroll

Gin From The Heart

Ultra-Premium London Dry Gins Distilled in the Heart of The Yorkshire Dales

Shop Our Gin

View our range

World Spirit Award Winner 2019
Europe Wine & Spirits Trophy Winner 2020
World Gin Awards Winner 2021

From the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, Taplin & Mageean (part of the Wensleydale Spirit Company) produces ultra-premium gins that only use the heart of the distillation. Truly “Gin from the Heart”

Shop Our Gin

The Gin

The Yorkshire Dales Bottled

From the beautiful landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales, Taplin & Mageean (part of the Wensleydale Spirit Company) has grown, and now presents you with award winning gins that are the essence of the Dales in a bottle. With a distillery in Leyburn in Wensleydale, Taplin & Mageean uses local ingredients to capture the taste of the Dales. The very heart of all gin is juniper — wild junipers growing in the very Dale where the gin is made. We also use local crystal-clear water naturally filtered through the ancient limestone landscape, locally grown apples, and hops from the world-renowned Dales-based beer maker Black Sheep Brewery. We also use some of the finest botanicals on the planet such as orange zest from Spain, Angelica root from Belgium, Oris root from Italy, and Coriander seeds from Morocco.

The Taste

The taste of our gins is bold like the Wensleydale landscape in which they are created. You can savour them like a good view, each taste reminding you of this quintessentially English landscape, known locally (and for good reason) as God’s own country. The beauty is the finished product, where botanicals, water, and spirit combine producing layers of flavour like layers of a Dales landscape.

The Ingredients

Taplin and Mageean produce 4 ultra-premium gins. Each is made with a recipe that allows the taste to evolve when sipped, with the different botanicals presenting on the taste buds at different times. Each gin uses the best grain neutral spirit, the best botanicals, and optimal soak times so that flavours can be layered.

The best gins — like good stories — have a beginning, a middle, and an end, each combining to create a unique taste journey that in the case of Taplin and Mageean encapsulates the essence of the Yorkshire Dales. During the trial process for all our gins, we start by plotting an intensity vs time graph for each botanical. This allows the overall sequence of flavours to be orchestrated before inception. Our distiller then meticulously trials different botanical combinations to work towards the target creation.

Signature Edition

A juniper heavy gin distilled with both dried and fresh grapefruit zest for an alluring and emphatic citrus hit. A robustly dry gin, masterfully compliments by Yorkshire hops, flowers, and spice.

Serving Suggestion: Premium Indian tonic, ice & a rind of ruby grapefruit zest

Shop this product

Spiced Orange

Distinct orange zest and juniper flavours is surrounded by a bold but balanced array of fig, cranberry, and cinnamon. Warm winter fruit flavours dance over a hazelnut and almond core with an ever so slight suggestion of spice.

Serving Suggestion: Premium Indian tonic, splash of ginger ale, ice & fresh orange zest

Shop this product

Peach Perfect

A generous helping of peaches, apricot, and vanilla make this beautifully balanced recipe deliciously palatable. Cocoa & Angelica root bring a full body to support the sweet and summery headline and finally a refreshing basil and pink peppercorn finish caps off a delectably complex experience.

Serving Suggestion: Premium Indian tonic, ice & lime zest and basil leaf

Shop this product

Elderflower Orchard

Simple and delectable. Elderflower Orchard comprises juniper, coriander, and orris root core, fragrantly supplemented by elderflower, chamomile, and and locally grown apples.. A subtle cinnamon undertone brings warmth to this light and floaty gin in a unique and complimentary way.

Serving Suggestion: Mediterranean tonic, ice & a thin slice of green apple

Shop this product

The Awards

Taplin and Mageean’s Signature Edition gin was awarded the silver medal in the gin tasting category of the 2019 San Francisco Spirit Awards, which was unprecedented for what was at the time a new artisan gin maker up against much larger and more experienced distillers. For most distilleries, receiving an award like this is the pinnacle after years of effort, but for Taplin and Mageean it came after just 5 months. It plays to our recognised position and profile as an ultra-premium gin maker with an obsessive focus on top-end taste and quality.

Since then our Signature Edition was also also a finalist in local product of the year category at the Flavours of Herriot Country Awards in 2019 (a prestigious award which celebrates the best in food and drink throughout the Yorkshire Dales), a winner of the Europe Wine & Spirits Trophy 2020, and a World Gin Awards Winner 2021.

The Distillation

The Distillery

The Wensleydale Spirit Company / Taplin & Mageean distillery is in the heart of Wensleydale. Uniquely, it occupies 200-year old buildings on the platform of Leyburn railway station, still used as a heritage line for visitors to luxuriate in the splendour of the Yorkshire Dales. Our distillery is embedded in the landscape. It is grafted from a place that was once a storage facility for cargo being delivered into the Dales, and where trains were mended before continuing their journeys across the county. We think that it is appropriate that our methods of distillation — using steel and copper — resonate with the building’s industrial heritage, and we have breathed life back into this historic piece of Yorkshire.

The Distillation

The distillation process at Taplin & Mageean dates back hundreds of years. It is a tried and tested process that uses hand-made alembic copper stills. Copper stills may be inefficient in many ways when it comes to maximising profit but we use them for a reason — they cling onto every flavour molecule.

Our distillation and bottling all takes place under one roof in our distillery at Leyburn train station, so there is no chance of our gin being adulterated by third parties who don’t share our attention to detail and passion for premium quality.

Trials of our recipes take place in an alembic copper pot named “Ruby”, and once the recipe is finalised, distillation scales up to our 100L copper still (Wendy) and our 300L copper still (Jenny).

Each distillation takes two days from soaking of first botanicals to extracting the final product, the distillation itself in the copper stills taking 12 hours. The botanicals are soaked for different durations to ensure each note is tasted at the correct volume.

At Taplin and Mageean, only a tiny percentage of the overall output is selected for bottling to ensure that peak optimal quality is maintained.

Ours is single shot gin, and only pure Dales water is added after the distillation process to cut it down to our bottling strength. There are no additives, and we don’t use extra raw alcohol. In this way you have an ultra-premium gin, and we remove the headache!

Heads & Tails

The gin distillation process can be divided into 3 parts — the heads, the heart, and the tails.

The heads can contain unpleasant chemical compounds like acetone and methanol. The tails are low in alcohol and contain nasty sulphates and fatty acids that give a stewed taste. In the middle, the heart is the highest-quality part of the distillation.

Run of the mill gins cut into or redistill the heads and the tails to maximise the volume produced and hence their return. Ultra-premium gins such as those produced by Taplin & Mageean focus in on slim central heart cut to ensure premium quality and smoothness. This is why we can maintain that Taplin & Mageean gin is truly from the heart.

Heads-TailsHeadsHeartsTailsForeshots

About

The Story

Taplin & Mageean was founded back in 2018 by Chris Taplin who worked with one of the youngest and most talented distillers in the country (who came to Taplin & Mageean after working as head distiller at the Yorkshire gin company Masons). The sole aim was to produce a series of world-class ultra-premium gins, and to do this Taplin & Mageean attracted talent. Since 2018, the team has grown to include experience in all aspects of gin production and brand establishment and marketing.

Chris Taplin owns the renowned country-house hotel, The Stone House in Hawes in Wensleydale, and has always been passionate about local produce, Wensleydale being the home of many renowned artisan brands. While constantly serving gins to his guests in the hotel from around the country, he was struck by the fact that the there was no local Dales gin, despite being surrounded by all the ingredients needed to make a stunning spirit.

From this thought Taplin and Mageean was born, and today produces award winning gins shipped all over the world.

The team at Taplin & Mageean are passionate about the Yorkshire Dales, and so it was important that the distillery was not faceless and industrial, but was grafted out of the historic fabric of Wensleydale and used traditional and time-served processes needed to make top-end ultra-premium gins.

The team is also driven by a passion to produce ultra-premium gins that stand out from the plethora of mediocre gins that are the product of businessmen looking for a new cash cow and jumping on the gin bandwagon. Taplin and Mageean put the quality first. If this is right the rest will fall into place.

The Label

Everything about Taplin & Mageean gin is synonymous with the Yorkshire Dales. If you take a close look at our label, you will see that even here the bird most closely associated with our Dales — the Curlew — is there in all its glory. Take a look at how we worked the Curlew into the branding for our gin.

We chose the Curlew as it is a common sight on the fells that surround our Wensleydale distillery. It also has its very own built in cocktail straw, perfect for sipping our award winning spirits. The shape of the bird provided the “&” that connects Taplin with Mageean

Chris Taplin

Chris Taplin is the owner of the prestigious Stone House Hotel in Hawes in Wensleydale. He is passionate about local produce, his aim as he established Taplin and Mageean being to establish a Yorkshire Dales gin brand that not only represented the area, but which could sit alongside well-respected and premium artisan brands produced in Wensleydale. Chris and the team at Taplin & Mageean all share a common desire to showcase just how well gin can be made. From there, the rest is history.

Chris Young

Chris Young is an international media, marketing, sales and communications professional who has over the last 25 years established a number of successful businesses in various sectors. Chris’s father was a Yorkshireman, and since he was old enough to walk Chris has been visiting the Yorkshire Dales, a place that is in his blood. A few years back, he and Chris Taplin began to hatch plans that would see Taplin and Mageean benefit from his experience in domestic and international sales and marketing to extend the reach of the company’s premium gins and other spirits. To contact Chris with any sales and marketing queries, please call direct at +44 (0)7712 891070 or email chrisyoung@taplinmageean.co.uk.

Ellie Douglas

Ellie has extensive experience in customer service and hospitality and a further 10 years frontline work in the NHS. At Taplin and Mageean she is now following her passion for sales & marketing, and coupled with a strong bias towards customer care she is looking after the events side of the business which will include booking festivals, gin tastings, distillery tours, and the very popular gin trains.

Marie Heckle

Marie Heckle has a proven and career long record of business creation, team development and optimisation, all in customer-facing roles. At Taplin & Mageean, Marie works alongside the team to develop and implement business strategy and planning, whilst advising on business development, of course all whilst remaining hands on. In a business that is always working to produce premium quality spirits for existing as well as new and emerging areas of customer demand, Marie’s experience integrates precisely with the skills of other team members to ensure opportunities are exploited effectively.

Shop T&M

Ultra-Premium London Dry Gin Distilled in the Heart of the Yorkshire Dales
Click here to shop

The Gin Train Experience

In December 2018, Taplin & Mageean made international headlines because it ran a gin masterclass event before being granted a legal premises license. The gin was set to launch, and all the tickets for the launch event had been sold. But the owners spotted a loophole in the licensing laws which permitted gin to be served without a licence on a moving train or an aeroplane. So the launch event took place on a train running on the heritage line that runs through Leyburn railway station right next to the distillery.

As a nod to this unconventional part of its history, Taplin and Mageean now run regular gin train experiences aboard the very same train running through Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales.

Book your ticket for any upcoming train experience events here, and enjoy the Dales in a Bottle while you soak up the beautiful scenery.

(Each tour event includes a look around the distillery, an informal discussion about the Taplin and Mageean gins, a return trip aboard the Wensleydale Heritage railway from Leyburn to Leeming Bar. Included in the ticket price will be four complimentary gins on the train and your own gin goblet. You can, of course, buy more if you wish!)
Read article
"The Taplin & Mageean Gin Train Experience: is the perfect opportunity to sample the award-winning range of premium single-shot gins whilst also enjoying the breath-taking scenery of the stunning Yorkshire Dales."
Craft Gin Magazine

Book tickets today

T&M Blog

20/09/2021

Its All Just Cooking – Taplin & Mageean Craft Gin

20/09/2021

Heads & Tails – Our Gin Distillation Process

20/09/2021

What’s in a Name

29/05/2020

Hand Sanitiser Production

22/05/2020

The T&M Distillation Process

News & Resources

2019

https://theginshelf.uk/2019/05/05/taplin-mageean-the-grand-fromage/

https://www.yorkshirebartender.co.uk/blog/2019/6/6/our-top-4-gins-world-gin-day 

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2018/12/railway-distillery-owner-uses-legal-loophole-to-sell-gin-without-a-license/

https://iamhuman-design.co.uk/taplin-mageean-spirit-co

http://jennyinbrighton.com/taplin-mageean-signature-gin/

http://www.richmondshiretoday.co.uk/leyburn-distillers-win-world-spirits-awards/

2020

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/yorkshire/north-yorkshire-distillery-begins-hand-sanitiser-production

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/business/18394408.dales-distillery-makes-sanitiser/

https://gin-mag.com/2020/06/11/gin-from-the-heart-the-taplin-mageean-distillery/

Contact T&M

We love to hear from gin lovers anywhere and at any time, so why not drop us an email or give us a call? Even better - pop into the distillery for a chat and a free sample!

contact@taplinmageean.co.uk

Off: +44 (0) 1969 624607

Mob: +44 (0) 7875 330316

The Distillery. Leyburn Station. Harmby Road. N. Yorks, DL8 5ET United Kingdom

Company Number 11535852 VAT No. 344595476

Trade Enquiries

Taplin and Mageean is an ultra-premium London Dry Gin distiller, and we have the capacity to ramp up production to 500 bottles per day for trade purchases. Price for trade purchases is negotiable depending on the volume required. To discuss your requirements please contact us on the numbers above.