Queen guitarist Brian May has launched a new gin named Red Special, honouring the guitar he built with his late father Harold when he was a teenager.
The drink was unveiled at the Portobello Distillery in Notting Hill, London, on October 8, with May personally involved in its creation, including using calamansi oranges from his own garden's greenhouse.
A personal project
Speaking at the launch, May admitted he was not always a gin drinker: "I wasn't really a gin drinker until recently. I've drunk a fair amount of vodka in my days. I didn't think I liked gin. But I went to Tuscany to play with Andrea Bocelli, an amazing guy and an amazing singer... In the room where we were staying was this little bottle of gin that they made themselves, and me and Anita both fell in love with the gin and so we became gin drinkers."
After that experience, he met the team behind the Portobello Distillery's Ginstitute and worked with them to create the Red Special gin. He took the process seriously, using fruit from his own garden.
"I had this nice little fruit at home [and asked], 'Can we try that?' because it's something that I've kind of fallen in love with. It's called a calamansi, a little-known citrus fruit," he explained.
"Oranges generally have a sweet juice, but you don't want to go with the peel because the peel is very, very unpleasant, very bitter. Well, this is the other way around. The calamansi has a slightly sort of pecan juice, a little sort of edge to it, and the skin is really sweet."
"So they distilled the calamansi, and we try all these things and lo and behold we go okay, it works," he smiled as he addressed the intimate gathering.
Honouring his father
The drink includes several personal touches, such as an exclusive collectible Brian May sixpence in the cap of each bottle. May has used a sixpence as his signature guitar pick for decades and released several ranges of Brian May collectible sixpences, beginning in 1993.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk at the event, May revealed the touching reason he chose to name the gin after his guitar rather than himself. He built the instrument with his father Harold when he was a teenager, making it a "homespun" project he wanted to reflect in the drink.
His father died at the age of 66 on June 2, 1991, from cancer, and May said: "I think of my dad all the time because he would love it."
"You know, all those hours that we put in in his little spare bedroom, which was his workshop in our house in Felton for two years, it was more than either of us could have dreamed that the guitar would go all around the world many times with Queen, with me, and now it's gone into other areas."
"So the fact that this gin is named after it is something special to me because it commemorates the homespun nature of our guitar."
Pointing to the surroundings of the Distillery's bar, he continued: "You can see what this place is like. It's very kind of homey, and it's a cottage industry, if you like. And that's the way it was with me and my dad. To me, it's all about excellence that you do personally."
"It's not about big sales or big corporations. It's about making something that you believe in, and you put your heart and soul into it, make it as good as it can be. And you want to make something that has never been made before, and that's what kind of keeps me going. That's why I still do projects."
"That's why I don't golf or something and forget about it. I want to be creative. I love to create at least part of it."
A homespun venture
May reflected on the unexpected path that led him to gin-making: "I never thought I'd be making gin. Never. It wasn't on my horizon. But in 1972, it wasn't on my agenda to play Madison Square Garden. You come across these doors open and you walk through."
"And to me, if it's creative and it's different, then it's worth having a really good look," he smiled.
He echoed this sentiment in his speech as guests sipped cocktails created using the gin: "My guitar was not a Fender or a Gibson something very sort of worldwide. It was a little homemade thing that me and my dad treated as a project when I was 17 years old."
"That's my guitar that I've taken all around the world many times. It's homemade. It's completely personal to me. And this is the same. This is a very homespun, very London, very British gin."
Red Special gin can be pre-ordered from the Portobello Distillery website now.
