MY COUNTRY BUSINESS

Lucy and William Lowe share how they opened their own gin distillery

- SHARON PARSONS

`Our Three Seasons gin is perfect for the festivities'

LUCY AND WILLIAM LOWE, FOUNDERS, CAMBRIDGE DISTILLERY

Grantchester Meadows in Cambridge has a lot to answer for. This pastoral landscape has influenced a wealth of creative luminaries, from the Bloomsbury Group to poet Rupert Brooke, and even Pink Floyd. ‘We think we were the first gin producers to be inspired by all it has to offer though,’ says Lucy Lowe who founded Cambridge Gin Distillery with her husband William nine years ago. ‘We were walking our labrador Darcy in the meadows near our home, talking over business ideas, and quite literally had a eureka moment when we realised that we were surrounded by the most beautiful, fresh botanicals, which could be used to create something very special.

That something special turned out to begin – an obvious choice given William’s formidable knowledge of wine and spirits (at that time he was working as a leading educator in wine; indeed he is now the world’s first distiller to recently become a master of wine). ‘Not only that, we knew making gin would take up much less time and space than other spirits,’ says Lucy, whose background as a business manager has proved a perfect foil to her husband’s distilling skills. ‘Basically, William does everything inside the bottle and I handle everything on the outside,’ she says.