How one Suffolk distillery is enjoying the current ‘Ginaissance’
A fter thirty years working in the corporate drinks sector, Gary Wilkinson knew that he wanted to run his own business. Having worked for some of the UK’s largest spirit distilleries, devising ways in which to improve the extraction of botanicals (the natural essences which give spirits their flavours), Gary and his wife Melanie decided to set up a craft distillery from their home in Glemsford near Bury St Edmunds.
The Suffolk Distillery has been producing gin and vodka for nearly two years, using, wherever possible, ingredients sourced from local suppliers. Supporting local businesses is important to the team at Suffolk Distillery; with a wealth of natural resources around them, finding top notch flavouring for their drinks has been made easier. According to Gary, East Anglia is a treasure trove for sourcing ingredients “I recently had a meeting with a supplier of Maldon salt for a new salted caramel flavour I’m working on, and over the summer obviously I’ll be buying all my soft fruits and berries from local soft fruit suppliers. We have a fabulous supply of natural flavourings in our region from rhubarb to honey and even coriander and lavender, I can get my hands on almost any flavouring within just a few miles.”
It’s not only the contents of the bottle which reflect the Suffolk heritage of these gins, even the branding of the Suffolk Distillery references the region’s ancient past. Each bottle bears a logo made up of the crown of St Edmund and the wolf who, legend says, guarded King Edmund’s decapitated head after the king was killed by Danish invaders near the town of Bury St Edmunds in AD869. The unique branding is displayed on beautifully printed labels, manufactured of course by a local printing firm. As is so often said in business, timing is everything. According to the Wine and Sprit Trade Association (WSTA) at the end of March 2018, sales of gin topped £1.5 billion, equating to around 55 million bottles bought by consumers around the world. Gin has come a long way since it’s last rise in popularity in the mid-eighteenth century when excessive gin drinking became an endemic social problem, earning the drink the name ‘mother’s ruin’. So, if you are in the business of making gin, this twenty-first century ‘ginaissance’ is just too good an opportunity to miss.
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