The one with the Code Breakers…
Last month, I had an email from Bletchley Park – home of the Code Breakers and for a time, Alan Turing.
It immediately piqued my interest. Those who’ve known me a while may know I used to work in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. This meant I had a small connection to Turing. It also turned out that Turing had a little connection to gin:
In his Turing Award speech in 1967, Sir Maurice Wilkes, the actual EDSAC project chief, recalled Turing’s input on discussions about a cheaper substitute for mercury as an ultrasonic storage medium. Apparently, Turing “advocate[d] the use of gin, which, he said, contained alcohol and water in just the right proportions to give a zero temperature coefficient of propagation velocity at room temperature”.
In other words, Turing reckoned that gin had similar properties to mercury when it came to “storing” ultrasonic vibrations – an early solution to the challenge of building a dynamic memory system for a digital computer.
For those wondering, mercury was eventually used, but a little bit of booze was used to aid the system, but I get the feeling it may have been ethanol as opposed to gin.
This connection, led the team at Bletchley Park, in collaboration with Wharf Distillery to create a gin and they held the launch in April. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Bletchley is only a couple of hours by train from Manchester, I couldn’t attend, but they were holding another event that was definitely doable.
One that saw myself and my husband miss a train and eat grilled cheese – but also don our vintage for a night of Gin-Tology. Gin, vintage and history. Any excuse to dress up.
The night began with a tour of Bletchley Park itself. And it’s stunning.
Seriously beautiful. The mansion and gardens are beautifully maintained. We wandered into the huts, which still feel somewhat temporary, despite their age. In fact in some it’s as if everyone went to lunch and just never came back. Bikes sit in sheds slowly rusting. Typewriters sit with handwritten notes next to them, just waiting for the owner to come back and finish the job. A net across the grass waits for a tennis racquet to hit a ball across it.
It’s beautiful but eerie, and I half expected someone in uniform, heading for a cigarette break to wander out of the door at any point and ask us what we were doing there.
Time to move from the distinctly sober to the not so much. Moving from the tour into the mansion itself, we were greeted with prosecco and by Bletchley Park’s Time Travelling Codebreaker’, ‘Julie Juniper’.
Julie whisked us through a history of gin with music, audience participation, and gin samplings, including the Park’s own gin. A London Dry style gin, I couldn’t resist snaffling a bottle for myself, after all the botanicals are hidden on the label itself.
From a tasting point of view, I’ll give you a run down. Neat, the nose is all juniper, lots of citrus, and a little spice. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but the nutmeg comes through just at the end. On the palate, there’s juniper, lots of citrus (safe to say this is a citrus led gin) then a little peppery heat. It’s rather savoury on the finish, despite the pot still roundness and liquorice notes.
In a G&T, the nose is lighter, lots of citrus again, predominantly lemon, and this is backed up by the palate, even with a light tonic, the citrus packs a punch, with the spice coming through at the end again. The juniper is definitely still there, but it takes a back seat compared to drinking it neat.
Bletchley Park is beautiful, and fascinating, and I can easily see us heading back for a longer visit (especially as we’ve found the perfect Air BnB nearby).
For those who fancy it, we’re told that the Gin-Tology Museum at Night events were such a success that they’re looking at holding some more later in the year. But if you can’t wait that long, you can purchase the gin from the Bletchley Park gift shop.
Our attendance at this event was paid for by ourselves.