Sam wins Employee of the Year Award!

We are very proud of our Brand Ambassador and Mixologist, Sam (pictured here with Director, Peter), who won the Employee of the Year category at Stratford’s Covid Response Awards, the ceremony held last week at Alveston Manor.

Launched by the Stratford Herald, and sponsored by Stratford Town Council, the awards celebrate the achievements, determination and innovation which was shown when the coronavirus struck.

As it became clear in late March 2020 that all hospitality and leisure businesses were being closed, Sam came up with the idea of virtualising our Gin Tasting Experiences that he was hosting as face-to-face tours. He came up with the idea of boxing three miniatures of our gins, along with the appropriate mixers, tasting glasses and a bag of Gin Truffle chocolates from our friends at Henley Chocolates. This led to the creation of our Home Gin Tasting Kit! Sam recorded himself carrying out a gin tasting at the distillery as an online ‘sip-along’ video – a link to which was included in every kit.

As pubs, shops, restaurants and hotels were forced to close and our distillery tours were put on hold, our online web shop became very popular for home consumption and of course birthday and Christmas gifts. The Home Gin Tasting Kit was THE most popular gift during this time. It also proved a huge hit over the Christmas 2020 period, where Sam spent his time doing live virtual tasting sessions over Zoom. Many of these were high attendance Zoom tasting events with big companies including one for employees from Google, as well as for charity fundraising such as Marie Curie West Midlands Hospice.

One of our biggest successes during lockdown was the launch of our new line of Jester Rum! Sam had previous knowledge of the Rum world and this proved invaluable in helping the distillery develop from scratch our British-made rum during 2020. This began with our award-winning Jester White Rum and soon led on to the creation of our Jester Spiced Rum and our latest distillery special, Jester Chocolate Rum!

Based on the success of the Home Gin Tasting Kit, Sam has now developed Home Cocktail Making Kits, with both gin and rum options, and a brand new Home Rum Tasting Kit with a sip-along video.

Since the business has re-opened to visitors our tours have become incredibly popular and Sam jumped at the opportunity to lead and train this new team of distillery hosts, maintaining our high-level of quality and positive customer comments; 96% of our TripAdvisor reviews are 5-star leading to the award of their Travellers’ Choice 2021!

A big thank you to Sam for all his hard work and very well-deserved recognition from this award.