Sweeping in off the Irish Sea, the Welsh Wind can be full of sound and fury, sharp with rain, or soft and gentle, a breath of air, a ripple across the grasses and wild flower meadows where we forage for some of our botanicals. The wind which sometimes cradles, sometimes buffets, the distillery is the wind that blew through our blocks as we made our way around Wales, whispering around us as we went.
Our first blog was called In the Welsh Wind – a diary of our travels around Wales, there for our family and friends to keep up with our journey. As a moniker, it came out of the idea that we were heading off into the unknown, that no one would really know where we were at any one time.
‘In the wind’ is a phrase that has an air of mystery that appealed to us when we were thinking of a blog name. Spies go into the wind (we were watching a lot of Spooks at the time!); prisoners are said to escape into the wind. And while we weren’t escaping from the life in West Wales that we had only just chosen, having already made some fairly drastic decisions about how and where we wanted to live, there was a sense that we were embarking on something big, an opportunity for time and space to think and to talk; to bat ideas back and forth, letting them soar with the seagulls or tip over the edge of the cliffs that we followed day by day.
Ellen’s roots are in West Wales, having moved here with her parents when she was 6 weeks old, and we met here, so as ‘In the Welsh Wind’ has developed from our original blog to food business to bespoke gin distillery, the name has stuck. It fits – for we are, very much, in the Welsh wind as it skitters through our day to day life: as we take our son up the coast road to school, as we welcome guests for gin tasting experiences, and clients and potential clients to discuss bespoke spirits for their businesses. For while we initially planned on selling our own gin, we had a complete shift in direction early in our first year, when another local business asked us to produce gin for them.
A year in, and this is where you find us. We have exciting plans afoot which we’ll share on our blog and through our social media (you can find us on Facebook and Instagram), and hopefully, soon, our own In the Welsh Wind gin.
Watch this space…
