JAMIE BAXTER

Craft gin is everywhere: you can buy Brighton gin, Edinburgh gin, Yorkshire gin and Cotswolds gin. There can be very few large towns in Britain that don’t now have their own distilleries. And for all these juniper-scented riches you can thank Jamie Baxter, who runs a consultancy business that builds distilleries around the country. According to Jamie, ‘Fifty distilleries opened last year and we built fve of them.’

Born in Glasgow in 1962, Jamie actually started out in food production. He was asked by William Chase, of Tyrrells Crisps fame, to open a muesli factory, but Chase quickly lost interest in the idea. The two of them subsequently decided to go into the spirits business together. Jamie spent time learning about small-scale distilling in America, and when he came back to England he began making vodka for William Chase (williamschase.co.uk) in Herefordshire. Chase launched their gin in 2008. Alongside Sipsmith (sipsmith.com) and Sacred (sacredspiritscompany.com) in London, they were at the vanguard of the craft gin movement.

Jamie was then asked to build the City of London Distillery (cityofondondistillery.com) and it’s from this project that his consultancy business has developed. Jamie is now a partner at the Burleighs Gin Distillery in Leicestershire. Despite craft distilling being a tiny fraction of the global gin business, Jamie thinks it has been highly infuential: ‘We get far more publicity, and this has opened the door for big companies to be more creative. Brands such as Beefeater are now producing barrel-aged gin – I don’t think they would have done that without the impetus from small distillers.’ burleighsgin.com