bryanpalmernovogen.com

New York’s Tuthilltown Gristmill is a long way from Nasmyth Road, a quiet, nondescript Victorian terrace in the suburbs of West London. Around 3,500 miles, if you had to put a figure on it. But the spirit of the Hudson Valley farm distillery isn’t far from a small, disused garage near the River Thames where a 2½-year-old copper still lies gently hissing away, distilling one of London’s newest gins.

Drinking Now

From everyday drinking to a treat from the cellar, three gins perfect for tasting today.

That gin is Sipsmith, praised for its zesty aromatics and dry “London style.” Such is its success—it is now stocked in a swathe of upscale bars, including London’s Savoy Hotel, Boca Grande restaurant in Barcelona and Soho House in Berlin—that Sipsmith has added sloe gin, vodka, damson vodka and a summer cup to its portfolio. There are also plans for a second still and a U.S. export deal. For a brand that began life barely three years ago, it’s been quite a ride.

The story goes back to 2002, when, in a Lower Manhattan coffee bar, childhood friends Stamford Galsworthy and Fairfax Hall found themselves thinking of home. The drinks business had led them from England to the East Coast of America, where Mr. Galsworthy was working in the export department of U.K. brewer Fuller Smith & Turner PLC in New York and Mr. Hall held a job with Diageo PLC’s strategy department in Philadelphia. Inspired by the small distilleries they encountered on their travels around America, such as Tuthilltown, Hangar One Vodka near San Francisco and Bluecoat Gin in Philadelphia, they had the genesis of an idea: to create their own microdistillery in London.

 

Wine Accessories to Make Wine Even More Fun

2:39

WSJ Wine Columnist Lettie Teague scans the wine accessories market and finds a few good tools and many destined-for-the-drawer toys on Lunch Break.

“There were so many things about the microdistilling culture in America that were great,” says the 35-year-old Mr. Galsworthy. “The quality of production was so much better. There was a real energy around all these little microdistilleries popping up everywhere, and we saw how consumers loved the buzz of an artisanal product.” But it took them five years, says Mr. Hall, 36, to “talk themselves into it.” After quitting their jobs, they moved back to England and set up shop in a West London premises that once belonged to the late whisky writer Michael Jackson. Employing the services of master distiller Jared Brown and commissioning a copper still from Germany’s oldest producers, Christian Carl, they set about creating a classic London-style gin, with unique botanical flavorings—a nod to the long-lost recipes of England’s West Country gins.

“It was a dream project,” admits Mr. Brown. “The evening I met Sam and Fairfax, we got talking about our general philosophy and what made a good gin, and we all agreed that the best that could possibly be done in the modern age is to take today’s better equipment, better-controlled ingredients and apply those to the formulas and understandings that came up over the centuries of making gin.”

Gin’s origins stretch back to the Middle Ages, when it was served as a remedy for various ailments. The modern form is said to have been introduced to Britain by soldiers who had drunk it in Holland during the Eighty Years’ War (hence the expression “Dutch Courage”). It grew in popularity, reaching its height in the mid-18th century, when its distillation was so widespread the era became known as the Gin Craze. An increase in taxes, licensing requirements and a change in taste eventually led to the closure of many distilleries, leaving Beefeater as London’s major premium producer.

The process used to create gin—distilling spirit, water and juniper berries and various citrus botanicals such as coriander and cinnamon—hasn’t really changed since 18th century. But despite the one-time proliferation of stills in England, “Prudence” (the name Messrs. Hall and Galsworthy, inspired by a favored phrase of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave their still) was the first to be launched in London in nearly 200 years.

In order to create a unique taste, Jared Brown went through a raft of historical recipes from the 1,000-drinks-book library at his home in Gloucestershire, and started experimenting with ingredients such as Italian orris root and Chinese cassia bark. “The whole process took around six months,” he says. “The challenge was not the recipe, but tailoring it to the still.” And a desire to create a bit of gin-making history as well.

Corrections & Amplifications

The modern form of gin is said to have been introduced to Britain by soldiers who had drunk it in Holland during the Eighty Years’ War. An earlier version of this article said it was introduced during the Thirty Years’ War.

Write to Will Lyons at wsje.weekend@wsj.com

By JOHN D. MCKINNON And LAURA SAUNDERS

WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department and the governments of five European nations reached broad agreement Wednesday on a proposal to prevent U.S. taxpayers from dodging taxes through foreign accounts.

WSJ’s John McKinnon stops by Mean Street with an interesting detail in the Senate’s proposed highway bill: it would be funded in part through taxes on IRAs and retirement accounts. Photo: AP.

At the same time, the Treasury and the IRS also released proposed regulations to implement a 2010 U.S. law known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which requires foreign financial institutions to report detailed information about U.S. account holders to the IRS and possibly withhold taxes on individual accounts.

If firms don’t comply, they could face U.S. tax penalties. An agreement among the U.S. and the other countries could help streamline implementation of the law.

The Treasury aims to make the regulations final by this summer.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. expressed support for the Treasury Department’s proposal, while other nations will be given a chance to evaluate the proposal and join in.

Washington for the past three years has been aggressively pursuing foreign accounts to make sure people aren’t using them to dodge U.S. taxes.

In a landmark 2009 settlement, Swiss bank UBS AG agreed to turn over to the U.S. the names of more than 4,000 U.S. taxpayers with secret accounts.

The IRS has since rolled out two programs allowing U.S. taxpayers who step forward to, in many cases, pay large penalties but avoid prosecution. At least 33,000 have taken the deal.

The 2010 law, known as Fatca, targets foreign banks to make sure U.S. taxpayers are paying the IRS what they owe.

The Treasury said various provisions of the regulations would be phased in from 2013 to 2017, to allow banks to develop appropriate systems and ensure they don’t violate local rules.

A Treasury official said several specifics of the new regulations would ease potential administrative burdens while still achieving the law’s purposes. For example, the proposed regulations allow foreign banks to rely on data they already collect to comply with anti-money-laundering rules, the Treasury said.

The announcement also appeared to embrace a recommendation by U.K. financial institutions for reduced information-gathering requirements on investment accounts that aren’t marketed to U.S. investors.

David Miller, a partner with Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP, said the proposed regulations are less burdensome than they could have been and satisfy the objective of ensuring “that U.S. taxpayers with foreign accounts pay what they owe.”

European banks for months had raised concerns that the U.S. law, as originally passed, might conflict with European privacy laws by requiring banks to enter into information-sharing agreements directly with the IRS. They initially reacted with favor to the new proposals.

Wednesday’s announcement included a joint statement from the U.S., Germany, France, U.K., Italy and Spain expressing intent to adopt a “common approach” to implementing the new law. That could allow banks to report U.S. account-holder information to their own governments rather than the IRS, solving many of the potential legal problems, European financial institutions said.

“I think this is a very positive approach,” said Peter De Proft, director general of the European Fund and Asset Management Association in Brussels. “We were very worried with the original approach and the burden it would bring.”

Countries such as Canada, Japan, Australia and China will be able to evaluate the proposed regulations and join in the negotiations with the U.S., said Phil West, a former international-tax counsel for the Treasury who is now at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington.

As the network of participating countries grows, “it may be that ‘bank-secrecy’ jurisdictions feel increasing pressure to move toward a growing international consensus on information exchange,” Mr. West added.

U.S. financial institutions, which also had worried about the potential burden of the new rules, had mixed reactions to Wednesday’s announcement. Some expressed relief U.S. officials appeared to accept a number of their suggestions for reducing the potential negative effects on them. But others warned the new system still could lead some foreign banks to reduce their investments in the U.S., to minimize their exposure to U.S. tax penalties.

“Implementation of [the new rules] will impose significant challenges and costs for many United States financial services firms and their customers,” the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a Wall Street trade group, said in a statement.

While the Treasury is still implementing the law for financial institutions, individuals already are feeling the impact. U.S. taxpayers holding foreign financial accounts above a threshold as low as $50,000 will have to file Form 8938 disclosing the accounts with their 2011 tax returns or risk financial penalties. These thresholds are different from those for the annual Foreign Bank Account Report form, which is due separately to the U.S. Treasury by June 30.

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Laura Saunders at laura.saunders@wsj.com

Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J.—Newark Liberty Airport was briefly shut down after a commercial passenger plane with hydraulic problems was forced to make an emergency landing Monday.

A plane made an emergency landing at Newark Liberty International Airport Monday evening after having trouble with its front landing gear. The jetliner from Atlanta, carrying at least 68 passengers and four crew members, made a so-called belly landing onto a runway that had been coated in flame-retardant foam. The plane’s crew deployed the inflatable emergency chutes and the occupants evacuated the aircraft unharmed.

There were no reports of injuries among the 71 people aboard United Express Flight 5124.

Authorities say the plane, which had departed from Atlanta, landed around 6:20 p.m., not long after the pilot reported a landing gear problem. Further details on the problem weren’t immediately available.

Newark firefighters were dispatched to the scene, but found no smoke or fire aboard the plane.

A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, says it was closed shortly after the landing occurred. But two of the airport’s three runways reopened about an hour later.