The Ginterview: Will Edge, Greensand Ridge Distillery

Natalie Marsh
May 24, 2021
5 min read

Greensand Ridge has been forging its own path in the distilling world. Founder Will Edge tells Kent Gin Co. about how the local land influences his creations, how sustainability always comes first, and his love for cocktail making.

How did you decide where to set up Greensand Ridge distillery?

This part of the world is fruit-growing territory and it was always going to be a distillery with fruit spirits front and centre. The reason being is that there is a lot of fruit waste in our local economy. The building was just a nice place to work - we’re deep in the countryside and near to all the farms where we get produce from.

Tell me about the products that you make?

Gin is obviously a bit of a zeitgeist at the moment, but that’s the case because there's a lot of people that can make it. For me, it’s just that my interest is and has always been much broader. My first love is apple brandy, and we make that. But gin is an important spirit because there’s these flavours out in nature, the flowers and the herbs, that you can’t turn into any other spirit.

We don’t make any flavoured spirits, and that’s a bit of an odd thing to say when all of our spirits are flavoured, or have a flavour. But what I mean by that is we don’t add any fruit flavours to a gin, for example. We take the fruit itself and make the spirit from the fruit, which is quite a different process, but you get a much more pleasant flavour experience from it.

The Raspberry and Blackcurrant Ghosts are very unique. If we were making spirits to be commercial, those would be lurid pink and purple because consumers buy with their eyes. But we’re known for making things a bit differently; very high quality and taking the less trodden path for sure.

You’ve won a lot of awards for sustainability - what practices do you have in place?

We do everything really. The reason why we win the awards isn’t because of the magnitude of the impact but it’s the breadth of what we do. Every decision we make, we make firstly based on sustainability and then everything else follows that. That was always going to be the case, and it’s become part of our brand.

We aim for zero waste, zero plastic, zero chemical use; we use 100% renewable power through all our processes and we aim to make spirits with produce which is not fit for human consumption. We’re not removing food from the human food chain, we’re either using by products or stuff which is no longer suitable. And that’s really important to me because our agricultural land is a valuable resource.

You have said that your products reflect the flavours of the land around you. What do you mean by that?

We don’t look around and see what people are buying and say: “What twist are we going to put on that to get in on the action?” We look at the produce which is either grown commercially or is native to this part of the world. We consider whether there is an ongoing waste part of that product stream which is not used in smoothies or sauces or things.

Then there’s a commercial part to it, which is can we make a good product from this and can we sell it, which is a sensible way to think. If all of those things line up, then we’ve got something there we can go at.

What plans do you have in place for the next few months?

We are always out there selling and promoting our brand. When everything opens up, we’ll be out there supporting our customers with in-store tastings or in-venue talks and ticketed events for our customers.

How has the gin landscape changed over the years?

As the gin market has developed, it’s separated. It’s not like it was three or four years ago, it was quite a homogenous market. You almost slightly have to pick your battles as a producer of a good, but more than ever, you have to be very targeted in what you’re bringing to consumers and what consumers you’re going after. Gin has been good quality and has been popular for two generations. It’s not like a flash in the pan.

A lot of the gin boom has been because it has been drawing in other types of drinkers; people who would have drunk wine or vodka. It’s a category that will always be strong in this country which is great. But as I say, we don’t chase the trends so much; we like to carve our own furrow.

And gin can be mixed with lots of other ingredients?

I’m a big cocktail guy, I love the process of making cocktails. And there’s a big booming trend in bottled cocktails. But if you think about the gin category, funky flavours of gin mixed with a funky flavoured tonic, well, that’s just a cocktail. And it goes to the point of today’s consumer culture where people want high-quality things but they want them quickly and they don’t want them complicated.

Being able to get home from work and in a couple of minutes you’ve made yourself a cocktail from a gin and a mixer - that really suits people. This trend to making things quickly, be it spiced rums or be it canned cocktails or flavoured gins, that will always continue.

I slightly take the opposite direction which is I love the process of making a cocktail, so I would never go out and buy a pomegranate gin and a cucumber tonic; I would use a gin and pomegranate syrup and cucumber bitters or something and make it from there.

My point is that when we make a rum, we want to make the best rum we can, and if I want to drink a spiced rum, I’ll make a cocktail and I’ll build the flavours up that way. That's the kind of market that we suit, it’s the cocktail market and the nerdy spirits drinkers who really want to know about the process.