THE DISTILLERY · STONEBRIDGE
The obsession, station by station.
A working floor, not a visitor centre. This page walks the same route the tour does — mill to washbacks to stills to safe to stone — with the people and the numbers that run it.
STATION 03 · THE STILLS
Greta & Pearl
Greta is the wash still — broad-shouldered, quick to temper, first to work every morning. Pearl runs the spirit: taller, narrower, slower, and the reason the new-make comes off bright instead of heavy.
Both were hand-beaten by a two-man coppersmith shop and both carry their dents with pride. Copper remembers everything you run through it; that memory is the house signature.
GRETA · WASH STILL · 2,400L
PEARL · SPIRIT STILL · 1,600L
STATION 04 · THE SPIRIT SAFE
Cut by nose, signed by hand.
The heart of every run is taken at the brass safe, by nose, before the rest of the town is awake. The foreshots go back, the feints go back, and the middle — the only part good enough to sleep in our stone — goes down the stairs.
THE MAKER'S PLATE
“Everyone asks about the stills. The honest answer is the cellar — I bought this site for the cold under it. The stills I could order; eleven degrees of basalt I could not.”
Saskia spent nine years as a cellar hand and blender before signing the lease on a flooded mill site nobody wanted. She still noses every cut, chalks every cask, and keeps the bond store keys on her belt.
Her standing rule is written above the safe: if a run isn't good enough to bottle under the mill's name, it becomes gin botanicals' problem — and the gin has never complained.
STATION 05 · THE BOND STORE
Four hundred casks, chalked by hand.
Every cask end carries its number, fill date and a tally of samples drawn — in chalk, because paint lies and chalk doesn't. When a cask is ready, the chalk comes off with one wipe and the bottling record starts.