What did you do before establishing Naughty Hare Distillery? Dawny has a very busy Holiday Lets business with her husband, called Hastings Retreat. This is where Naughty Hare is based as well. Alongside that she also plays the guitar and sings in a country music band called Hartland. She has 2 dogs and three grown up sons, so life has always been busy. Gabi is working full time in compliance in financial services and has always travelled a lot with work in the past. Less so after the pandemic, instead enjoying the opportunity to get our gin business from a mere idea on paper to reality. What inspired you to launch Naughty Hare Distillery? It was December 2017. We were on a plane to somewhere warm. You know those inflight magazines? We were reading through them. There was a story about Barra Distillery in Scotland who were making gin with seaweed. Intrigued by the fascinating story, we were hooked, especially as it was a family business. We got home determined to look into how to set up our own. Oh, but the cost of a still completely put us off. The cheapest one was around £50,000, so there was no way. I guess we weren’t ready at the time….. Fast forward to April 2022 and a chance visit to a small distillery in Scotland called Wee Farm. We went to this little place as we wanted some peace and quiet, a hot tub and lots of gin. What more can you wish for? Perhaps it's the smallest distillery I’ve seen so far and I was so inspired. The owner has 3 young kids, a working farm, and she is also making gin. Wow! What’s stopping us then? It was the beginning of our proper journey into making Naughty Hare a reality… What are the inspiration and aims behind the Naughty Hare brand? We’re based in the heart of the National Forest, one of the youngest forests in the country. We also wanted our name and brand to be a reflection of everything British. Why? Gin is British. Very British. There are so many things about Britishness, its quirkiness about the weather, about queuing, drinking tea, and so on and so on… so we wanted a tribute to all these. We wanted to give gin drinkers a piece of Britishness born in the heart of the National Forest, surrounded with storytelling. What is the meaning and story behind the Naughty Hare name? Initially we thought to name our gin Heart of the Forest. We even designed a few labels, inspired by the wildlife here. Then, one night, as we were making various gin recipes (and trying some), Dawny noticed lots of rabbits in the fields around the property. And she said “oh, look at all these naughty hares, they’re everywhere!”. The next morning, she woke up and texted me: “How about calling it Naughty Hare?”. A name was born, and the concept for the brand. We wanted people to think of our gin and have fun, and to associate our gin with those great moments with friends, family, when you share something that you love. Where to the names of your individual gins come from? With every flavour we designed, we wanted these to be a reflection of Britishness, of facts and events that perhaps are less known but they ended up shaping Britishness as we know it. Take our Viscount Brian 'After Dinner' Gin for example. The name is a tribute to Brian Sollitt, the inventor of the After Eight chocolate. Perhaps it is one of the most famous British exports, yet Brian Sollitt is relatively unknown. So we wanted to pay homage to him and his amazing creation. Can you tell us more about your distillery and your stills? We both love the traditional way of making gin using a copper pot. We have a fascination with the simplistic way of the chemistry behind the process. Copper is an amazing metal. The way it ages, changing colour and carries on doing a great job. We started with a tiny one, a preloved 1.5L still we bought on Facebook. We loved her and called her Virginia. She gave us that thrilling moment when we made our first gin ever. When we tasted that liquid coming out and called it 'our gin'. That amazing feeling that will stay with you forever. Our next still was Big Bertha - a preloved 10L copper still from eBay. She is so big compared to our little Virginia! It allowed us to try larger quantities and upscale our recipes. Then came our beautiful, very curvaceous, the hard-working lady who is making all our commercial gin: Betty. We named her in honour of the late Queen Elizabeth, as both of us felt a heart-warming connection to the late Queen. We wanted to honour her legacy somehow and this is our way of doing it. Can you tell us more about your distillation process? We’ve opted for a classic distillation process, using a copper still. We only use natural ingredients, for example, we use cacao and mint in our After Dinner Gin and butterfly pea flowers to colour our Lavender and Rosemary Gin. All of our botanicals go into the wash at the same time and are distilled in one distillation, with the exception of the cacao which we leave in the wash overnight before adding the other botanicals. What are your favourite ways to drink your gins?
Mediterranean Tonic is our favourite with all our gins. Gabi prefers lemonade or Aromatic Tonic with our Duchess Anna-Maria Gin (Strawberries & Cream). Dawny loves her King Charlie Gin with olives. Desert Island Gins: Which 3 gins would you take with you?
What is your ambition for your Naughty Hare Distillery in the years to come? Our ambition is to make it an international brand and to make all those lesser known facts about Britain better known. We also having a good laugh when enjoying our gins. We want everyone else to love our gin as much as we do! What's next for you and Naughty Hare - any exciting plans? Well, 2024 is our first year of trading. We like small steps and making sure we grow in a way that we can control. So we’ll carve out some online collaborations, we’ll start working with local pubs, restaurants and stockists. We’ll do tasting events and markets. And we’ll see where all these take us. You Might Also Like...
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