Rare BirdDistillery

Matt Stewart set up Rare Bird after thirty years as a firefighter in York, converting a derelict stable block in Talbot Yard with his wife Elizabeth into Malton's first gin distillery. Trips to Bordeaux and Tuscany shaped the recipe: Sicilian lemons and French rosemary sit among eleven botanicals distilled through a three-hundred-litre copper still the couple named Florence. Besides the core London Dry Gin, the range includes a rhubarb and ginger variant and a vanilla spiced gin. A gin school above the still room takes up to eight people through their own distillation, and a licensed bar at the front of the building stays open through the week, closed Sundays and Mondays. Talbot Yard also houses a coffee roaster, a butcher, and a bakery, making it a small food quarter of its own.