2024 – A Summary of the Year – Henstone Distillery

Wow, what a year for Henstone Distillery. It started with us having to construct a new facility following the re-structure of our business. A turning circle on a farm yard was transformed into our new distillery in a period of about four months. You can read the full story here but in summary we built the new facility whilst continuing to produce, bottle and sell from our old location. Once we had completed the new distillery building we had a couple of months while we moved stock and equipment but continued to bottle and sell! Phew!!

We welcomed Dave, our new distiller and operations support team member, in April and we also welcomed Flo, our other distiller, back from maternity leave in June. Henry became a Director during the restructure – this is on top of his sales manager role.

We won a few awards too! Our London Dry, Rosé and Navy Gins were all winners in their respective categories in the Gin Guide Awards and we had a ‘special mention’ in the Distillery of the Year category too! In the Gin To My Tonic Awards our Navy Gin and Charcoal Filtered Vodka both received Gold Awards!

From a festival perspective we attended more than previous years – starting the year in Harrow in January 2024 and finishing in Kendal in December 2024. In between we had Southport, Scarborough, Bakewell, Birmingham, Croydon, Evesham, Ludlow and London to name but a few! 2025 will see us beating our record by far as we travel the length and breadth of the country. You’ll also find us on a lovely train on the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway and, of course, at the Oswestry Food and Drink Festival.

Considering our move and the fact that we only started distilling at the new site in late June we went in to release quite a few new products including our Orange and Ginger Gin, Raspberry Vodka, Old Dog Corn Whisky and Red Range Whisky. On top of this we have also produced an increasing number of white label products for customers – these include, but are not limited to; Shrewsbury Gins, Providence Gins, Bar Lounge Gin, Poco Panal, and Leopard Gins, etc. Oh, and we mustn’t forget The Next Step Gin we made to celebrate The New Saints of Oswestry Town football club progression into the group stage of the EUFA Conference League. As a result of the latter we also appeared on BBC Breakfast TV!!