Since our last update several weeks ago, there has been a hurricane of activity here at the Distillery and now feels like the right time to pause and reflect on everything we have managed to accomplish so far.

As July rolled around and after much anticipation, we officially opened to the public with the launch of our brand new website and flagship spirit – George Bishop London Dry Gin. The initial support was truly staggering and in an effort to keep up with the explosion of orders, we even had to temporarily repurpose our experience room as a fully fledged packing line.

Shortly thereafter, we opened up bookings for our Distillery Tours which commence from Friday 28th August. We’re delighted to say that these have proven extremely popular and many slots have already been completely filled up. We’ve just about finished adding the final touches to our experience room and can’t wait to host you here for what we think will be an incredibly entertaining, sensory experience with the addition of some great audio visual content. Our tours can be booked in store or online via our Tours page.

Last week we launched our second spirit, Ranscombe Wild Small Batch Gin, which is a celebration of the local landscape and Plantlife. Many of the botanicals we use in this contemporary gin, such as wild marjoram, corn mint and poppy seeds, are foraged locally from Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve. Much more than just a footnote to the flavour, these unique ingredients make up much of the core profile of Ranscombe Wild, making for an incredibly interesting, herbaceous and zesty take on a traditional London Dry style. We’ve also pledged to donate £1.00 from every bottle sale to our charity partner Plantlife, of whom Ranscombe Farm is their flagship reserve. Plantlife are Europes largest wild plant conservation charity and their patron is HRH The Prince of Wales.

Since launching a little over a month ago, the team has doubled in size with Otis now on board to assist us with our marketing efforts and Lily who has taken ownership of our front of house responsibilities. We’ve also had a great deal of interest from the press, with various articles such as this from Kent Online being published, and culminating in Darren giving a short interview live on air with BBC Radio Kent.

We can’t wait to see what the coming months bring and can’t thank you all enough for being a part of the journey. We’ll see you very soon!