What was your background before becoming distillers? We are two farming families based in Herefordshire. Dickie and Charlie were growing fruit together and one day had an idea! They wanted to create something using our fruit that was not perfect enough for the shop shelves. What made you decide to start your own distillery and how has the team grown? We started creating delicious gins, not because we thought the world needed another gin brand, but because we wanted better for our imperfectly perfect fruit. How has the team grown since you launched in 2018? Firstly, it's all of us involved now, not just Charlie and Dickie. We are two farming families running Penrhos Spirits together - The Turners, Charlie and I, and the Williams, Dickie and Sally and their daughter Harriet. We also have two local members of staff helping to create our gins and a further two based in London, but the core remains the family. We used to consider ourselves Fruit Farmers who distill, we now think of ourselves as Distillers who farm!
Can you tell us more about your distillery? The distillery is in a beautiful old barn at Penrhos Farm where Dickie's grandmother used to raise calves, her name was Constance so we've called our copper still Connie. We're so lucky with our beautiful surrounding's and we're proud that we rescue fruit from all over Herefordshire to use in our gins. What has been the biggest challenge so far? In 2022 we were the first distillery to move from glass to 100% recycled aluminium, this reduced our packaging's carbon footprint by 91% which we are so proud of! But this occurred due to the difficulties in getting hold of glass bottles, this encouraged us to look at alternative packaging and ultimately led us to our new amazing bottles.
What have been the biggest achievements so far? The biggest success has been the launch of our new bottle made from 100% recycled aluminium. The fact that a small brand from Herefordshire has come up with an idea that is challenging the way we look at delivering gin is something that I am very proud of. We've questioned whether there is a more sustainable solution than glass We're also very proud of getting listed in 411 Sainsbury's stores nationwide, and of course our Awards too, including our Wonky Raspberry Gin being named as 'Product of the Year 2023' in The Gin Guide Awards, winning the IWSC Design Award, and being nominated for The Grocer's New Product & Packaging Award.
What's your favourite way to drink your gin?
A Gin & Tonic, outside in the sunshine, and with a garnish of frozen blueberries. A good tip, if you have leftover blueberries or if you buy a disappointing punnet, don't throw them away - freeze them and then use them to garnish your G&Ts. Desert Island Gins - which 3 gins would you take with you and why? We're really don't drink many other gins besides from our own! But we think a bottle of Isle of Harris Gin would be good to send a message in a bottle from a desert island! It's such a beautiful bottle someone would definitely want to pick it up! We recently tried Four Pillars Gin and thought that was very good. And Salcombe Gin, enjoyed overlooking the sea, is pretty good too! What's next for Penrhos Spirits - any exciting plans? It's always exciting when you're talking about gin, that is something that will never get boring! We're always looking to improve our carbon footprint and become more sustainable in the distillery and we're on our journey to becoming BCorp Certified. We're also hoping to release some more limited edition flavours next year. You Might Also Like...
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