OUR STORY
WHO ARE WE?
We are Paul and Cheryl, husband and wife and owners and creators of Stockport Gin!
We met way back in 2006 on a cold, wet weekend in Torquay watching our beloved Stockport County – or trying to anyway - the game was called off! Instead, we spent the weekend in the pub and the rest, as they say, is history!
PAUL
I had worked for an Architectural practice in Manchester since 2003. Not long after launching Stockport Gin, I realised I had found a new passion in life and made the switch from Architecture to Distilling.
CHERYL
I was running my own hairdressing business but as soon as we launched our gin there weren’t enough hours in the day, so I gave up my hairdressing career to oversee Stockport Gin full time.
We both love working together as our roles differ and we have both found our own places and jobs in the business meaning we compliment each other...and keep from getting under each others feet (mostly!). We both get involved in the distilling process, as it is something we really enjoy, but what we really love doing is getting out to events, meeting people and telling them all about our gins.
So, how did Stockport Gin come about…
OUR STORY
Stockport Gin was born out of our love of craft gins. Many happy years had been spent travelling around the UK, and further afield, and wherever we were we loved enjoying the local gins. It in fact became a bit of a hobby of ours and we always bought a bottle to bring back home and add to our ever growing collection! So what made us set up our own distillery you ask?! Well, whenever we went out locally in and around Stockport we always asked for the local gin but what was on offer was always from outside of the town. We always said to each other “Someone should make a Stockport Gin” …but no one did…so we did!
We had joked about the idea for some time but it all really started one Friday night when sat at home enjoying a G&T (or 5!). We had been planning for a while to extend the house and have a bigger kitchen. I (Paul) with my architectural background, had designed a wonderful extension which looked incredible, the only problem was that it turned out to be double the budget - so the plans for the extension were quickly halted! The pot of money was burning a hole in our pocket now and the idea of making our dreams a reality and setting up a gin distillery were mentioned. Normally Cheryl’s crazy ideas are brought back down to earth by Paul but on this occasion we were both in agreement and in the blink of an eye the laptop was fired into action and a new company was registered! At this very moment, Stockport Gin was born! We woke the next morning with fuzzy heads and as owners of our own gin distillery!
Now the hard work really started. We immediately set about making plans for the business. Developing the brand, researching, learning, approvals, licences, recipe development and of course taste testing. Eventually, on 22nd March 2019 we launched Stockport Gin to the world and haven’t looked back since!
At first all of our gin was distilled in our garage at home but now, all of our gin is made at our distillery in Stockport Town Centre and we are involved in every part of the process. We use a 100l stainless steel column still to produce our gins and then each bottle is filled and labelled by us before being checked and sent out all over the UK.