the collector vermouth
The people behind the Ethicurean spent three years perfecting a recipe for their own house vermouth, called The Collector, on account of their delight in collecting objects of flavour and beauty. The name is in reference to those “relentless in their endeavour for the particular”. The perfect topic for our first film collaboration. The Collector Vermouth contains 20 botanicals grown in their English walled garden, including bay, rosemary, sage, wormwood and yarrow, plus wild ingredients from the surrounding countryside and the Mendip Hills, including rowanberries and scots pine. With these ingredients they make botanical tinctures, using spirit distilled from organic cider apples grown in Hereford. These botanical tinctures are then blended with a handmade caramel made from English sugar and a white wine made from 100% Malvasia grapes, grown and fermented by the Sartori family in Italy’s Veneto region. The small batch production takes place in a converted Victorian glasshouse overlooking the walled garden and the hills beyond.
So, one beautiful June day, when the walled garden and the surrounding landscape was in full bloom, three of us got together with head chefs Iain and Matthew Pennington (and their dog Ocho) and shot the making of the vermouth; the foraging, distillation, mixology, surroundings, product and enjoyment. Needless to say we were supplied with some pretty special food to keep us going too. Our aim was to depict the beauty and detail of the product, its origins and craft and to show The Collector’s sense of place. We then recorded a conversation between brothers Iain and Matthew talking about the vermouth and added a score of music composed by Jonny Pryor in combination with a wild track from the surroundings. One of the high points was certainly filming the brothers watching the sunset from their perch on the roof of the restaurant. A perfect ending for a very tasty shoot indeed.
“The developing and producing of The Collector Vermouth is a slow process, but one that we feel incredibly proud of. We wanted a way to show the complexities of each step, while capturing the beauty of the land that we work on. Pixillion have managed to capture and convey both the complexities of this process, and the beauty of the land that we work from every day. Their creative ideas, professional approach and efficiency meant that within a week of filming and editing, we were left with a video that we could not be more happy with.”
Some other work from the past years
A seven-minute video without sound that’s projected in the bar area of the restaurant during the winter months so people can still experience the glorious walled garden in a way.
Iain and Matthew Pennington
Mark McGabe
