AFTER an interesting, educational and enjoyable meeting of The Alternative Board, chaired by Martin Allison, this week, I made the trip across the Pennines to the launch of a new gin.
Someone in our board meeting misheard me and thought I was off to the opening of a new gym.
They clearly don’t know me well enough.
The invite was thanks to Sophie Brown, who used to run the finances at Leeds Bradford Airport and is now the chief financial officer of Quintessential Brands, a London-based drinks group founded by former Campari Group CEO Enzo Visone and ex-investment banker Warren Scott.
The group owns a range of alcoholic drinks brands including the historic Greenall’s The Original London Dry Gin as well as exotic new gin brands such as Ophir and BLOOM as well as a variety of rum and whisky-based liqueurs.
You don’t need to be a barfly to know that the latest alcoholic drink to undergo a renaissance is gin.
One no longer goes into a pub or bar and asked for a G&T. You have to pick your brand of gin and in some places there is now even a choice of tonic waters.
I can remember when all you were offered was either Gordons or Beefeater.
Things moved on and then the trendy thing to drink was Bombay Sapphire, followed by the emergence of Hendricks which you absolutely had to drink with cucumber.
Now you often get the choice of all sorts of flavours to complement your gin, from basil and a variety of other herbs to slices of orange.
And while Quintessential Brands has clearly had plenty of success on the back of the resurgent popularity of gin, it clearly values heritage too.
The launch this week was for its newest brand: Thomas Dakin Gin.
I’d never heard of Thomas Dakin either.
But he was the “forefather of English gin” and the man who set up what became Greenall’s Gin, launching his distillery in Bridge Street, Warrington, in 1761 at the age of just 25.
Now Quintessential Brands has doffed its cap to this English gin pioneer by launching a bottle of gin bearing his name which is distilled in small batches at the world’s oldest distillers in Warrington.
And the new gin is made with a secret recipe which includes juniper, orange peel and coriander as well as red cole, the name by which horseradish was known in Dakin’s day.
Apparently red cole was used to help revive weary travellers journeying by coach and horses from London to Scotland.
To bring things right up to date, the gin has been created by Joanne Moore, who trained as a biochemist before moving into the world of drink, becoming only the seventh Master Distiller at G&J Distillers to hold the title since 1761.
She gave guests at the launch of Thomas Dakin Gin a fascinating snap shot of its history and how it is made.
At the launch event it was nice to bump into the power couple of North West finance, Judith McMath and Gary Davison.
Judith is director at Wells Fargo Capital Finance while Gary heads up EY’s specialist UK debt advisory business.
She told me she is an avid reader of this blog – guaranteeing her a mention!
I must have watched too many westerns, because for me, Wells Fargo conjures up images of stage coaches thundering across the Wild West and I can’t hear the name without Frankie Laine belting out Rawhide coming to mind.
Fortunately Judith is no Calamity Jane.
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For any property agents out there, Quintessential Brands is looking to build a small distillery in Manchester, which would be the city’s first ever.
But it just needs to find somewhere in the city to base it.
I’ll only charge a 10% referral fee for that tip.
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The Thomas Dakin Gin launch was held at Manchester House, the trendy new restaurant and bar run by Living Ventures Group.
The venue has garnered plenty of praise and is certainly impressive but may suffer from the problem that many similar venues do – staff that don’t really understand or care about good service.
One guest at the event asked a member of staff for a drink and was dismissed with a curt: “I’ll do it once I’ve served this food.”
They turned to someone else, only to be told: “Oh I’m a barman, I don’t serve drinks here.”
“So who does then?” I asked him.
“Pretty much everyone except me,” he replied and walked off.
You can create the best venue in the world, but if the service isn’t right then that’s what visitors will remember it for.
Have a great weekend.