A drinks entrepreneur who set up a gin brand during lockdown to celebrate Inverclyde's ship building past has just won his first major award.
Andy Samuel, 37, is based in Gourock, created Shipyard Gin realising a dream he had had since he was a young kid spending time with his grandfather John in Greenock.
A shipbuilder by trade, John would often let Andy tag along to help him pick berries and flowers for his weekend hobby of making wine.
"I'd always had this idea to start a gin brand that celebrates the local heritage of shipbuilding we have down here," said the Greenock born entrepreneur. "A bit of a pipe dream, the amount of spare time I had during lockdown led to the dream becoming reality."
His hard work has finally paid off, and after starting the company a little over 12 months ago, he teamed up with distiller Lewis Scothern at Distillutions to perfect the recipe, which was inspired by memories of his grandfather.
"I went to Lewis with the botanicals I wanted to use for the recipe," explained Andy. "And we the developed it together.
"I wanted to use some of the flowers and berries my grandad would pick as botanicals, but we had to make a few tweaks to that original plan and we settled on Gorse, Elderflower and Heather as the key botanicals."
Only launched on October 14 last year, Andy is delighted to have just won his first award at the London Spirits Company annual awards.
He said: "There are loads of these awards worldwide and some mean a lot more than others and we always wanted to pick the more prestigious of these, to go up against some of the big hitters in the industry.
"So the London Spirits Company was the first competition we've entered and we were really just seeing how we fared against these other companies, obviously we thought it was a really good gin but you do begin to have a little self-doubt.
"We won gold, the highest award you can win without actually winning gin of the year.
"Getting that result back is phenomenal really, it just shows we do know what we are doing and it's not just us that likes it."
Described as a citrus-forward gin, Andy said that it works best with a garnish of grapefruit and rosemary and Edinburgh-based tonic Cushie Doos, which also features both the heather and elderflower in its recipe.
Andy explained that the bottle itself is designed to represent the prow of its ship with strong lines, and offers a more masculine gin brand to many of the existing gin brands out there.
The entrepreneur is now set to release a second gin in the coming months and also hopes to open his own local micro-distillery in the town where he can give tours and tasting and bring more people to this wonderful area of Scotland.
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