What a week it's been… we are finally getting a chance to sit down and take it all in!
One thing we’ve learned since launching the Isle of Lewis Gin is that there are so many ups and downs when running your own business. Being based in the Outer Hebrides throws up additional issues, especially when it comes to logistics. Recently we’ve felt like it’s been a bit of a slog - all work and no play. It felt a bit like we were working hard and couldn’t see much coming to fruition… until last week when everything happened at once!
The week started with the August issue of British Vogue magazine being released and us finally getting to see our small feature on paper - we were included in their ‘Vogue’s summer hamper’ feature. It feels amazing to have recognition from a publication like Vogue who said they saw our social media and website and thought they looked beautiful. We genuinely won’t get over it, it’s a massive deal for us, one that we’ll be celebrating for a while!
The same day Vogue was released we got some pictures of our still being built. We’ve been waiting on these for a while and it’s been delayed a bit so finally getting to see our still being put together was really amazing! It makes it feel real. We are desperate to move the production of our gin to the island as soon as possible and we’re still working towards that. We will soon be in a position to bottle and label here and once the still arrives it won’t be long until we’re a fully functioning distillery!
We had the most amazing weekend at HebCelt festival in Stornoway. Our gin was in two of the bars and it sold out by the end of the weekend. To see it sitting behind the bar and to hear people ordering it was just incredible! It feels so surreal. We had such an amazing time with family and friends listening to music and having fun!
We had a tasting day in the Island Spirit Whisky Shop last Saturday afternoon which was a success - Iain, Mary, Connor and Alice are so great! We loved meeting all our amazing customers and seeing some friendly faces too.
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the negative or feel like we’re not quite doing enough but when we stop for a minute and think about everything we’ve achieved in the last 8 months we feel like we can be really proud of how far we have come and how much we have been able to achieve. We are so close to having our gin distillery up and running out in Uig on the Isle of Lewis, we can't wait to start that chapter of our business.
We are incredibly grateful for all the support we continue to receive. We will be back with more updates soon! Thank you for following along on our journey so far.
Slàinte mhath,
Iain & Laura x