T I P S F ROM THE TOP
THE FOUNDER OF BRIGHTON GIN, 47, ON THE SECRET WAY TO AVOID A HANGOVER, CREATING YOUR OWN BREW AND HAVING TO FURLOUGH HER OWN MOTHER
How did this all start?
I’ve always loved gin, even during the uncool days when you’d order it in the early ’90s as a student and everyone would laugh and say, ‘That’s a nan’s drink!’ Back in those days, they’d only ever serve Gordon’s gin, or maybe Beefeater. Other drinks punish me in unusual and terrible ways – red wine gives me terrible headaches as I get older. But gin keeps letting me get away with it.
How did you turn your favourite drink into a business?
After one particularly late night drinking gin and dancing around the table, I got up the next morning and went on a run. I was thinking, ‘Any other drink and I wouldn’t have got off the sofa but gin lets me get away with it,’ and then I thought, ‘Brighton is the place where people get away with it,’ and it was a light-bulb moment – by the time I arrived home, I knew I wanted to make a spirit called Brighton Gin. I thought, ‘How hard can it be?’ – but never ask that question because it turned out to be very hard! I was working by day at Radio Four as a schedule manager, commuting to London from Brighton and spending my time on slow trains to read as much as I could on making gin. I did both jobs full-time for six months, snatching sleep in between, and I look back now and think, ‘How did I not die of exhaustion?’ But I could see the gin scene was growing.
So you just made gin at home?
I could picture what I wanted the bottle to look like and I knew how I wanted my gin to taste. I bought a Portuguese copper still off eBay for £150, watched videos on YouTube and read loads of books. The first ever gin I made was undrinkable. It smells pine-like but I put so much flavour and spice in it, it tasted like loo cleaner. I still have a bottle. When I sorted the flavour out, the gin came out cloudy. It took two years to get the recipe right.
When did you realise it was taking off?
Our first bottle went on the shelves in 2013. The week before Christmas we went to local shops and asked them to stock our gin, and the first batch, which I thought would last for months, sold out before Christmas. That was my moment of thinking, ‘This business really could be a goer.’ Since then, there have been so many really moving moments. The first time I heard someone order our gin by name, seeing our bottles in Waitrose for the first time, waving our first pallet off to Hong Kong and sending our first consignment to Australia. Covid has meant we’ve been back on our bikes, delivering to local customers and chatting on their doorsteps. One woman said to me, ‘I already have three bottles but I wanted to keep your business going.’ It moved me so much, I had tears streaming down my face.
What’s been the lowest point?
I worked seven days a week for a long time, and that’s terrible for relationships and friendships, and I’ve seen a few of those go down the Swanee. In fact, for my New Year’s resolution on January 1, 2020, I wrote on a Post-it, ‘Don’t work every weekend and spend more time at home.’ It turned out to be a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’ as I suddenly found myself at home for the rest of the year.
Oh yes, Covid – did you have to furlough staff?
Yes, the hardest thing was sending my own mum Jude home. She’s 77 and our production manager but, although she wanted to keep on working, she had to self-isolate. Now she’s back at work, lifting crates of gin. There’s nothing like the attention to detail and work ethic of someone of that generation.
How has Covid changed things? Are we all just at home drinking far too much?
I think what people are drinking has gone up a quality grade. What I would have spent in the pub, I can now spend on nice bottles of wine or a quality bottle of artisan spirit. People have been experimenting with cocktails and if they’re buying direct from producers, they’re also helping that company survive. Despite Covid, we make 20,000 bottles of gin a year and export to five countries. But over the past year we’ve been making not-for-profit hand sanitiser to support the community, and for every one sold through the website, two more are donated to front-line workers, first responders and delivery drivers. We donated the sanitiser to the Brighton and Hove Samaritans to enable them to reopen.
Mistakes, you’ve made a few?
I’ve fallen out of the mistake tree, hitting every branch on the way down – sadly there are so many to choose from – but perhaps the most memorable was in the early days, when I nearly burnt down my flat. My mate Ian and I were so busy concentrating on distilling, and so thrilled we could actually smell gin, that we didn’t monitor the heat. Suddenly everything went up in flames. We took the still on to the fire escape and tried to pat the flames out with oven gloves, then they caught alight too.
Finally, what’s your hangover cure?
If you drink enough of anything you’ll feel pretty s*** but stick to the same drink and, if possible, to distilled clear spirits – so gin or vodka (gin’s more fun!) There used to be a bar in Brighton that served a hangover cure breakfast – a pot of black coffee and packet of cigarettes! But take a bracing walk and gulp down three pints of water and plenty of fresh air. You’ll be fine…