The Road to Coburg Street.

Production

3 Feb

We first got the keys to the Tower Street Stillhouse in September 2017. It was a pretty scary step, committing ourselves to a three year lease with a very grown-up contract.

Our gin still wouldn’t even arrive for another 6 months, but the unit was the ideal size and location, so we decided to grab it while we could.
The 100sqm unit seemed enormous at the time. Rather than heat the whole thing, we bought a garden shed to serve as our office. Ian spent many cold, lonely months in that shed, trying to push our plans forward.

Over a year later, in November 2018, Lind & Lime was finally launched and there hasn’t really been a quiet day in the stillhouse ever since.

What had originally felt like a massive space began to feel very small. We had to empty it every morning to allow enough space for operations inside, and then fill it back up in the evening. By 2020, we were looking for a bigger site.

Finding a suitable industrial space in Leith with the capacity for our operations as well as visitors was pretty challenging however. So much industrial land is being turned over to residential.

We therefore felt incredibly fortunate to secure our new premises in March 2021. Situated right in the heart of Leith, it has plenty of space to allow for growth in gin production as well as tours, events and office space. We naively began to plot our move there for the summer.

Nothing in the construction world is ever as simple as you hope it’s going to be. The months passed by, summer turned into Autumn, and we were still no closer to moving in.

It was therefore incredibly exciting, and quite a relief, when we finally started work on the building at the beginning of this year. With a fair wind, we hope to be operational there by April, and tours can start shortly thereafter.

We’re going to have a lot of fun in that place when it’s done…