Pioneer in gin and botanicals sees distillery blossom with major retailers
Name:
SME FOCUS in 2011 I decided to follow this and retrain at Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gardens to become a Herbologist.
With my new skills in tow, my wife and I opened the Secret Herb Garden in 2014, which we originally intended to be used as a cafe, venue and herb nursery. It took us two years to create the garden from a derelict 7.5-acre site. We created a beautiful place and people started to ask if they could use it as a wedding venue. As a result, we ended up holding weddings every weekend in summer for the next three years.
After our ability to hold weddings was then cast into doubt temporarily, on planning grounds, my wife said: “you know that thing you can do with to change the colour of gin, I think you had better start a business with it.”
As someone who works with plants for medicinal purpose I had found that roses changed gin pink when tonic was added. I had also worked out how to distil fresh flowers to capture the true essence of the rose and we had been drinking this rose gin that turns pink at home.
What were you doing before you took the plunge?
I had spent 20 years working in the drinks industry and I owned a successful wine and whisky business called Inverarity Vaults, which was sold to WM Morton in 2011. When I decided to follow my passion for herbs I thought I was leaving the drinks industry for good.
How did you raise the start-up funding?
I was lucky enough to get support from friends of friends who all really liked the idea of the gin. They were up for investing to help us convert the old barn into a distillery, so we could bring the gin to market.
What was your biggest break?
Having one of the buyers from M&S as a guest at one of the weddings at the Secret Herb Garden. We got chatting and they asked my advice on what good local gins were. Of course, I couldn’t wait to tell them about a truly unique floral gin soon to be launched from the garden. The rest happened nicely for us.
What do you most enjoy about running the business?
I love walking across the garden from our home that we built on site to the distillery each morning (we spent the first three years all in a static caravan).
I also love how varied our business is. As well as running the distillery, we have the Secret Herb Garden, where we grow more than 600 herb varieties and run a cafe, hold weddings, dinners, courses and events. We grow all our own botanicals here too, so people can see 1500 juniper plants, coriander all the base botanics, the flowers we use, the drying room as well as the still and bottling process. We will be opening a garden gin tour and visitor centre for the distillery very soon.
Getting to work with my family is also a real blessing. My wife, Liberty, runs the cafe and supports the gin side of the company; my eldest daughter
Francesca, who works full-time with the business, sits next to me running all the events and marketing, while my eldest son Rory, who is at university, works in the garden or the bottling line when he needs extra money. My youngest son Nicholas is in charge of cutting the grass and my middle daughter Violet spends summer holidays showing people around the garden. Our youngest daughter, May, (18 months) gets to meet everyone.