Gin distillery tours in London

Get up close and personal with the custom-made copper stills at City of London Distillery. Enjoy a £25 session that lasts an hour and 15 minutes and takes in London’s unique gin history. You’ll be fuelled by a flight of three gins, and you can purchase more gin tipples at the distillery's slick cocktail bar straight after.  Alternatively, you can design and distil your very own gin for £125 in the 'gin lab'.

Take a tour of Hayman’s, a distillery that made its return to London in 2018, setting up shop in Balham. Tours cost £25, last 90 minutes and include an all-important G&T, plus a tutored tasting. Cocktail masterclasses are also on offer for £35.

The granddaddy of London gin traces its origins back to 1829 and has been distilling on this site since 1958. Amazingly, London's oldest and most internationally renowned distillery is open to visitors. Tours last around an hour and a half and cost £25 (G&T included). Plus, there’s a particularly enlightening sniff-tour of the major botanicals that give gin its characteristic flavour.   

Easily slotted in alongside a visit to Maltby Street market, Jensen’s is made at the Bermondsey Distillery and you can drop in for a tasting on weekend market days. Admission is free, and you can bring in food from the market. If you want a proper tour, groups can email requests to gain access all areas on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Sipsmith was the first of the new wave of London gin distilleries, and is still the best-known. The company runs tours (£25 including a G&T) at 6.30pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and at 4.30pm on selected Fridays. Sip a G&T while listening to a little history of gin in London, then tour the stills – Prudence, Patience and Constance – and get a tutored tasting. For £65 you can drink deeper with a two hour gin cocktail masterclass on Tuesday evenings.

For those who like their gin in the fast lane, it’s time to clamber on board The Gin Journey’s ‘gini bus’. The chauffeur-driven evening tour, led by a gin-ius team, takes in five bars and one distillery for £75, with a gin cocktail served at each location. Tours take place on Saturday afternoons and take place across either Soho and Shoreditch. Chauffeur: provided. Ibuprofen: BYO.

They’re producing gin down by Camden Lock again for the first time in fifty years, and you have Half Hitch gin to thank for it. You can get hands on with this history at the micro-distillery’s very own Gin School. You’ll have a tutorial on the gin-making process before your chance to make your very own batch of the juniper-led spirit. You’ll leave with a bottle of your own booze, all for £70 per person. 

Make your own small batch gin out east at 58 Gin’s Hackney Downs distillery. Over the course of three hours you'll settle in with a G&T before sampling three different gins to find what flavour profile most takes your fancy. Then select your botanicals and watch them as they work away in the still (with another gin cocktail in your hand all the while as well as some charcuterie nibbles). It costs £125 per person.