Bartending helped Dr Anne Brock be Bombay Sapphire’s master distiller

It’s fair to say that Dr Anne Brock has something of a dream job: she’s the master distiller for Bombay Sapphire, overseeing their Laverstoke distillery and the spirit for all of the Bombay brands. I spoke to Dr Anne while she’s in Melbourne, where she’s launching their latest gin, Bombay Sapphire Premier Cru, and in this conversation we talk about the lessons she learned as a bartender — and how the nature of the day to day work as a distiller is similar to that of a bartender. We talk about how she managed Covid and its potentially career-ending loss of smell, why the human nose still can’t be beaten by science and tech just yet, and what it feels like to see the things you make at work end up in the hands of bartenders around the world.