Now, I know you will have seen me mention that we love The Hooting Owl bar. It’s just such a lovely place, with lots of comfortable seating and a convivial atmosphere (you can see a review of the bar here). Yesterday we got to try out the daytime gin tour. There seems to be two tours available, one during the day that lasts around an hour and a quarter and another – The Full Hoot Distillery Tour – that lasts two and a half hours.
Our tour started at 2:00 p.m. so we decided it would be a good idea to have something to eat beforehand. The Hooting Owl offers 12-inch pizzas for a fiver (bargain!). We shared too between the three of us and I brought our leftovers home!
They also offer sharing platters which we are definitely going to try another time.
2pm rolled around and we began our tour with two couples who had come down to stay in York from Scotland. Before you start the tour proper, you get to try a full size glass of Hooting Owl Signature gin with your choice of tonic or lemonade (call me a philistine but I prefer lemonade to tonic!).
The tour begins in the distillery and you learn all about how Hooting Owl gin is made and some of the background of the company. It’s interesting and light-hearted fun.
After the distillery and your first large glass of gin. You then proceed to the comfortable sofas where the tour continues. We learned more about Hooting Owl gin, before moving on to try more varieties.
We tried four different gins in total, a further large glass of gin and I believe, but my memory gets a bit fuzzy around this point that we then also tried some rum.
Yes, when I say my memory got a bit fuzzy around this point, the gin had a large part to play in this (ok, it was everything to do with the gin!). We review a lot of bottomless brunches in York, which I love, but I don’t recall ever being quite as ‘fuzzy’ after one of our bottomless brunches as I was after the Hooting Owl gin tasting session.
We had a lovely time with both our host and the other people on the tour. There was a great feeling of camaraderie and it was just a fabulous afternoon. It’s £25 for the afternoon tour, £30 if you add a pizza. I really think it represents excellent value for money. A word of warning though – just make sure you don’t need to do anything difficult afterwards!!
We were invited to visit and review the gin tour. As always, all opinions expressed are my own.
