Walking into the Beefeater Gin distillery is a lot like walking into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. It’s more alcoholic and there are no apparent Oompa Loompas but the magic is all there. What’s especially amazing – and makes me believe there may be a few Oompa Loompas hidden away in the back - is that a mere four people work in this distillery in Kennington, London, which single-handedly creates over twenty million litres of gin each year to be sold in Britain and exported around the world.

It’s most likely technology not Oompa Loompas which are doing the work as the distillery has its fair share of gadgets and gizmos, which are used to analyse everything from distillation temperatures to the flavour profiles of the botanicals – all ensuring the quality and consistency of the end product. As has been the case since James Burrough first devised Beefeater’s secret recipe in the 1860s, though, the biggest gadget of them all is the master distiller.

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The current Wonka is Desmond Payne, who has been distilling gin for 40 years and is acknowledged as the leader in his field. It is he who, amongst other things, is personally responsible for the selecting and buying of all the botanicals which go into Beefeater’s gins – an enviable but pressured position. A look down a corridor coming off the main distillery gives a taste (and smell) of the job in hand. In special nosing units are samples of all nine of Beefeater’s botanicals. Angelica root, angelica seed, coriander, liquorice, almond, orris root, lemon peel and Seville orange peel all need to be sourced, sampled and blended in order to achieve the correct balance of flavour to create Beefeater’s trademark gin. And that’s before even beginning with the juniper. This defining ingredient can hold the gin industry to ransom at any time. It’s un-farmable, completely weather dependent, reliant on being picked by foragers, and has huge quality variation, but without it we couldn’t by law have gin. The “juniper room” next door is Desmond’s solution to this. Packing a powerful fragrance, stockpiled here is enough juniper to last for two years, each batch purchased having gone through a rigorous selection process including being electronically checked for oil content á la Heston Blumenthal and, most crucially, taste tested by Desmond himself.

The distilling process is another co-operation between man and technology. An analysis room sits atop a platform by the massive gin vats where a computer beeps in consistent monitoring, but what is crucial to maybe the taste but certainly the spirit (excuse the pun) of Beefeater gin is that in the traditional way since 1820, botanicals are still added by hand, and the vats still manually stirred – not to mention that all this is still done in central London, where Beefeater is now the only internationally recognised brand to distil premium gin. Despite all kinds of economic incentives to move out, the brand holds heritage and history close to its heart and its heritage is London.

Entering a hidden-away private bar decked out in Union Jack decor, it’s clear that Beefeater is also about fun. Here mixology maestro Dan Warner mixes up gin cocktails modern, traditional and often deadly, using both the classic Beefeater London Dry and the new Beefeater 24 as bases. And believe me, it’s the kind of place you could spend many happy hours...

Leaving the distillery with just an element of sobriety, I know the precision with which Beefeater gin is made, the love they put into it and the amount of fun they have doing so. It is also only after seeing, smelling and tasting the individual botanicals that I am able to fully appreciate their flavours in the finished piece. View the list and try the gin and taste the flavours for yourself, but unless they start giving out golden tickets – or you happen to be a Beefeater, all of whom are invited regularly - that may, sadly, be the closest you’ll get...