A PAIR of gin entrepreneurs from Swindon drew the crowds with their first ever festival devoted to the liquor.

Friends of 10 years, Lisa Flack and Sara Whitham launched the Peculiar Gin Company in March, bringing out their own south west-distilled Jezabel Gin three months later.

On Saturday, the women hosted the firm's first gin festival – choosing as their venue the Railway Village’s quirky Platform and turning the hall’s British Rail-era train carriage into a cocktail bar complete with UV lighting.

In the room were more than 30 different gins, ranging from liquors distilled with rock samphire and geraniums to honey-flavoured gins produced with gardens charity the Royal Horticultural Society.

Lisa and Sara’s own Jezabel Gin label also featured, flavoured with the leaf from cooking banana plant Plantain. “It’s a little bit spicy, then you get a subtle berry finish,” said Sara. Only 17 bottles of the gin are produced from each run and the drink is bottled and labelled by hand.

Gin has undergone something of a renaissance over recent years, with hundreds of small-batch distillers cropping up around the country. Lisa said there had been an explosion in the number of people interested in boutique gins: “Originally, it was all about Gordon’s Gin. Then we had Hendrick’s, then Bombay Sapphire, with its blue gin.

"That changed the face of gin. People wanted something a bit different.

"It opened the floodgates.”

Enjoying the festival on Saturday afternoon was Nikki Parker, 49, of Old Town: “There are a lot of different gins her that I haven’t seen before and I’ve never had the opportunity to try.”

For Mick Oldland, 71, of Liden, the secret to a good gin was simple: “It has got to be strong and smooth, so it doesn’t catch on the back of your throat.” His advice to gin novices was to test the flavour of their liquor by drinking a tot neat, poured over ice.

Festival-goers were encouraged to score the flavour of their gins in a “Gin-Dex” booklet being handed out as they were welcomed to The Platform so, in the words of one helper at the event, they could remember their favourites despite feeling worse for wear the next morning.

Accompanying the gins, tonics and cocktails, was a singer and guitarist, art dealers Oink Gallery, vintage hairstylists Victory Rollers and even a tarot card reader named Mystic Ruth.