Whatever happened to this boutique gin distillery?
Whatever happened to this boutique gin distillery?
We go in search of Jon Harper, owner of a Gloucestershire distillery Raikes first wrote about at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, to see if he was able to steer his business through the worst.
Good afternoon everyone,
We hope you have had a great week. And we hope you’ve enjoyed the editions of Raikes we’ve published so far. Today’s journal will make it three in a week, a target we did not expect to reach quite yet – but we’ve had this great story (see below) sitting on the site locked up to all but our members and we couldn’t resist sharing it to everyone.
First, on today’s edition we do our usual pre-amble about the main story below before we introduce you to another charity that caught our eye, then follow that with our briefing notes – the news, views and posts we’ve spotted we thought worth corralling here, on Raikes.
If you know a charity and want it featured, please do let us know. We aim to introduce you to as many as we can while we can. And if you are a business and want us to run a short picture story or few words on something you are up to, please do the same. We may charge a business for the latter (the prices are on our About page), but you’ll not only get a well-written story on a respected platform made credible by its quality journalism, you’ll be supporting a community interest company supporting your community.
A win–win, surely!
* You are reading this journal because of the generosity of our members, who support us by paying a subscription (£12 a month or £120 a year - £2.30 a week), our founding members who have pledged even more and our partners (who we will be revealing over the coming weeks). Please do consider becoming any of the above and joining them in supporting our efforts to promote Gloucestershire and restore some community journalism to the county. Contact andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Today’s main story
Although most of us would rather forget the pandemic and the scars it left, there is little doubt many who survived it stress-tested the very word resilience itself. For those in the early stages of their business journey, just putting into place what they hoped would become the foundations of a business to come, Covid-19 was devastating. Which makes it all the more heartening to re-discover those fledgling businesses that remained alive despite everything.
In today’s piece (see below), Andrew Merrell revisits a story we ran on Raikes when it first launched at the start of the pandemic in 2020. It re-tells the story of Jon Harper, whose Boutique Distillery was on the runway, engine turning over and ready to fly, when the economic climate changed for the worst, and he goes in search of Harper in the hope his business survived.
But first, that charity we promised to introduce you too – and then your end-of-week news briefing, some of the most interesting posts we’ve spotted this week.
Our chosen charity: Hope for Tomorrow
👩🏽⚕️ We have the incredible Stonehouse-based Hope for Tomorrow to thank for providing a mobile cancer care service for NHS trusts across England, allowing them to treat patients closer to where they live. Its units let the NHS drive out to patients, saving them long, regular, and often disruptive journeys, to hospital for treatment. You can help make the service continue to happen in all sorts of ways, from raising a few pounds through a coffee morning to corporate sponsorship or volunteering. Find out more here.
Your Raikes’ briefing
💷 It's with special thanks to Sam Holliday, the development manager for the FSB for Gloucestershire (and all the West of England, for that matter!), for highlighting this. He helpfully points out that a new series of grants have been made available to Forest of Dean businesses. This is round two of a series of funding that began in Autumn 2023 and offers businesses between £3,000 and £25,000 to help them build and grow. You can follow the link to the right place from Holliday's LinkedIn post here.
👏 Yesterday we unlocked another story we’ve had on the site since we re-launched. If you are not at university, know no one who is and have no interest in them at all it’s easy to see them as somehow separate from the rest of us. We picked up on a report which highlights just how significant they are to the economy. Research England took a look at the UK universities having a significant positive impact on industry, the public sector, the economy and society and singled out two from Gloucestershire for particular praise – Hartpury University and the Royal Agricultural University. Congratulations both. Read the story here.
☕ 🤟🏽🖖When we first set out on our journey to establish Raikes in 2020 we were invited by the team at Roots Cafe and Community in Kingsholm, Gloucester, to use it as our official address. Roots grew from a group of people who put their own money into the inner city area and created a magical community haven. If you are a parent of children who grew up in the shadow of the mighty Gloucester Rugby stadium, an elderly resident of the nearby flats and tower block, if you were a pupil of Kingsholm Primary School, if you liked good coffee (Gloucestershire’s own Ethical Addictions coffee) and honest, affordable food - served with a smile - you will know what Roots has meant. This weekend, at 4pm on Saturday, it closes for good. Raikes wanted to pay tribute and say ‘thank you!’
🤛🏾 We’ve grabbed this one to put under your noses not because it is hard news, but because it’s such a great charity - and if we could help it tempt someone from the business community to fill this role it would be no bad thing. We are talking about The Music Works, which provides not just incredible spaces for young people to make, experiment and learn about music, but also inspire them to be themselves and live their best life. It really is that powerful! The charity’s looking for a director of community and place and prepared to pay circa £40,000 – £45,000 a year. Find out more here.
Whatever happened to this boutique gin distillery?
By Andrew Merrell
After years honing his craft and months building the foundations for his business a Gloucestershire distiller, whose skills can be traced back to an original 'moonshiner', was about to make his first real big strides towards expansion – and then came Covid-19.
Bottles of the juniper berry-flavoured gin The Boutique Distillery hoped would become its route to success were ready; the Mid-Counties Co-op had agreed to stock its craft product and the business owner was lined up to pitch to dragon investors.
A deal had been agreed with the Julian Dunkerton-owned Cheltenham-based No. 131, and the team at the spa town bar and restaurant had put the gin-maker in touch with a distributor – a sought-after ticket for anyone in the sector.
Fortunately, Jon Harper, the man who learned the mysterious and magical art of distilling alcohol after striking a bizarre deal with an old-time moonshiner in the hills of his native New Zealand, is not a man who lets too much knock him off course.
Reeling from the potentially destructive blow the former boxer (until a spinal injury put paid to his pugilism) was still able to conjure up a little footwork to remain standing. And boy, like many others battling the invisible force of the Covid-19 pandemic, he had to dance like the proverbial butterfly to survive.
“We were going great guns, rolling along well,” he said, his New Zealand accent not diluted by a decade-plus in Kingsholm, Gloucester.
“It (the pandemic) forced me to look at what we do. We needed to move online and fast and it pushed me to sort the website out and look at other ways of promoting what we do,” he said.
With no Co-op deal he suddenly had plenty of stock he needed to shift, and fast.
An indication of how Mr Harper, a one-time aerospace engineer, can duck and weave is in the freebee he offered those who bought his fine gin - a bottle of hand sanitiser, made from the alcohol he produced for the gin.
We say 'fine gin', because, in his own words, he “set out to make the best it is possible to make” - even hunting for the right water - and finding what he wanted in the Malverns (spring water works better, apparently).
All the ingredients and knowledge are distilled by the second love of his life, ‘Ginavive’ – the cheekilly named distillery he built himself, had certified and ratified by SALSA (the leading food safety certification Scheme for the UK's small food and drink producers) and which until recently worked its magic at a secret location.
‘Somewhere in Gloucestershire’ was the best we could get out of him at the time.
We say 'second love', because Harper is married to Sandra, a Gloucestershire driving instructor, with whose backing he launched the The Boutique Distillery. His day job pre-pandemic was as an award-winning wedding photographer.
Even with the best social distancing possible, both careers were on hold throughout those dark days of 2020 and 2021, when lockdowns closed down UK plc and laid waste to many small businesses.
Which is when online became his focus. And with hygiene suddenly becoming a national obsession thanks to Covid-19, why the freebee sanitiser he gave away with each bottle was not quite the odd pairing it might seem now.
He was also thinking longer term - wear your heart of your sleeve and stand for something, so you customers remember you and hopefully return your loyalty too.
“We are giving the hand sanitiser away with each purchase and making a donation of 10 per cent to the NHS and the Air Ambulance Trusts,” he explained at the time.
"We have given some early batches to nurses we know and some to the police as well.
“I joked with them it was so strong that it could double as pepper spray.”
Ginavive produces exceedingly strong Gin in excess of 172 proof or 86 per cent abv.
“It smells so incredibly gorgeous at this stage however requires tempering down to 45 per cent abv to make her tipple more balanced and most enjoyable.”
Supply chains were in place pre-pandemic with the legendary Pelican Inn, near Gloucester Cathedral, the ever-popular Over Farm Market, Severn & Wye Smokery, Made in Stroud, Tivoli Wines, The Cotswold House Hotel & Spa, Chipping Campden, No. 131 - Gin & Juice, Berkeley Castle, Stroud Brewery, The Fountain Inn (Gloucester), The New Inn (Cirencester) and The Hive Cafe, Stowe on the Wold.
The only question remaining is did Harper and The Boutique Distillery make it through the pandemic to chase the dream again?
We are happy to report that the business now has a permanent base at Unit B9, Kestrel Court, Waterwells Dr, Quedgeley, Gloucester GL2 2AT from where it sells its award-winning gin and Haka Rum and Jon Harper can be found, ready to help, behind the counter, that has been known to double as a bar (for tasting purposes, of course) come Saturday. It’s also stocked at a growing number of outlets and pubs across the county.
And ‘yes’, in case you were wondering, he is still very definitely with Ginavive!
* This story was first published in 2020 on The Raikes Journal.
Some ideas for the weekend
Friday (February 9)
🎭 Cheltenham Playhouse is hosting Be Our Guest tonight (and tomorrow - Saturday) at its Bath Road venue. This is Cheltenham Operatic and Dramatic Society (CODS, as it is known) giving it everything - celebrating 20 years of productions at the playhouse by delivering tunes from shows including 42nd Street, Evita, The Producers, Legally Blonde and Rent. Find out more here.
Saturday
🚜 Gloucestershire RABI Farmers' Ball 2024 is due to take place today, Saturday February 10 at at The Frogmill (A436, Shipton Oliffe, Cheltenham GL54 4HT). Prepare yourself for a Black Tie evening of drinks, a three-course meal and an auction, followed by dancing to the music of live band, The Shadow Monkeys! Tickets cost £75, with all proceeds going to RABI (Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution) to fund its work supporting farming people across England and Wales. Email eleanor.bowen@rabi.org.uk or call 07842 414651.
Sunday
🎶 For some Sunday entertainment why not check out that legendary venue for musical excitement, the Prince Albert Inn on Rodborough Hill, Stroud. The band ‘Careful, Spider’ is due to play the hillside pub from 7pm to 10pm. Tickets are £10. If you buy them online there's an 80 pence booking fee. Find out more here.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (who we will be revealing over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable!
🔓 You’ve been reading a free edition of The Raikes Journal, for which we are grateful. Please do spread the word about what we are trying to do - create a real, journalistically-led, community-orientated, Gloucestershire-focused digital magazine. If you upgrade to paid, you will get on average eight extra members-only editions every month and will be able to see beyond any paywalls, as well as read Raikes’ rolling Top 100-plus Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You will also be allowed to comment on stories, make suggestions for what we should be writing about, vote in our awards, and might even be invited to our roundtable events. And you’ll be supporting the rebirth of high-quality journalism in Gloucestershire on a website championing the county you love — all for just £2.30 per week (£12 a month or £120 a year! Ask us about 20 per cent off for groups of two or more subscribers).