The Master Distiller

The master is a woman

Joanne Moore is only the seventh Master Distiller in the 250 year history of Greenall’s Gin. Joanne has held this role since 2006 and has worked in the distillery since 1996. Joanne has stayed true to the original recipe of Greenall’s and has also developed our premium gin brands of Bloom and Berkeley Square. As well as our own portfolio of brands, Joanne has also been instrumental in helping our 3rd party clients develop their own label ranges and their own brands.

Joanne oversees the entire gin making process from ideation to creation and enjoys experimenting with new botanicals and flavour profiles to bring the gin experience to a wider audience.

Why not ask our master distiller a question

How did you become a master distiller?

I have been working at G&J Greenalls for nearly 15 years, initially in the laboratory as a Supervisor, before being promoted to Quality Manger, and in this role I was exposed to the wonderful world of botanicals and spirits. Through working with the previous head distiller to create new gin recipes, I found I had a natural flare and passion for gin. You could say that like other distillers, especially those in the whisky industry, I worked my apprenticeship until the previous Head Distiller retired in 2006, when the title was passed on to myself.

What would a typical day be like for you?

It can be very varied which really appeals to me as no two days are the same. Of course, there are some things that are routine and so when I’m on site I part take in the daily taste panel where we conduct tastings of all the products produced on the stills the previous day. If I’m working on a new project then I will spend some time in the tasting lab playing around with flavors/ botanicals/ tweaking / adjusting etc to get the right blend / profile. Or researching into different botanicals. I also play an important role in educating consumers and trade on G&J Greenalls brands like BLOOM.

How long would an appointment to create a bespoke gin usually take? Would you do tastings to find out the client’s preferences?

The creative journey can be anywhere from 6 to 9 months and will depend on what sort of ingredients you want to use and how easy they are to find a sustainable source. I normally would take the client through a full tutored tasting session, whereby I would explain the fundamental principles of Gin, the various types and the distillation process. I would then follow with a session on showing them the different types of botanicals and explaining what works well together, for this I use a tool called the Gin Aroma Wheel which I have created as a educational tool to explain why all gins are not the same and how flavours work together to create the various different gin brands. At this stage the client should start to have some preferences on which direction they wish to take, so this is where the creative fun starts.