Otterbeck Distillery: Meet the three women who have opened a gin business on the site of a Georgian cotton mill in North Yorkshire

Eliza is the nod back to the 18th and 19th century mill days. She has returned named as a still for a gin enterprise launched on the same site that now goes by the name of Otterbeck Distillery, the brainchild of three gin-loving ladies all local to the area - Nicola Lampkin, Alexa Ives and Geri Turner.

Former primary school teacher Nicola admitted that the decision to go into gin production had been aided by a rather pleasant social occasion on New Year’s Eve a few years ago.

“Our distillery name is Otterbeck which runs alongside the distillery where Bell Busk Mill once stood. We wanted to bring something from the area into our business name.

“Otterburn Beck joins here at a conflux with the River Aire, but we also wanted our gin to have a connection with the past here too.

“Cotton is pure, fresh, natural and lovely. These were all qualities we saw as being important to our gins."

Nicola said that foraging locally for local spruce that is used in all of the Cotton Gin produced at Otterbeck was an important consideration and something that all three ladies, plus most importantly their distiller Chris, Alexa’s husband, believe makes their gin distinctive and so it has proved with numerous awards and accolades in their first two years.

“You have to be creative when making gin. It is a passion and an art. You have to have a good London Dry gin, and that has sold wonderfully well online during the lockdown periods, but working with botanicals and flavours is very important.

“We all love the more herbaceous gins with spruce involved right across our range. It’s quite a balmy, citrusy spruce.

“We use herbaceous things like elderflower, spearmint, lemongrass and watercress and the majority is what we forage for locally. We use rosemary, mint, sage and thyme in a lot of our gins and rosemary is part of our classic gin.”

Nicola said that while they were three gin-loving girls in the first instance, they found that their individual experience and professional expertise were wholly complementary.

“When we made the decision to go into gin production, which we have done because we have an actual love of gin, we found that all three of us brought something different to the party.

“We all brought something different to the concept. I specialised in art and design as a teacher and had the creative side to design the bottles and the packaging. That is a massive part of the gin world. People like a good-looking bottle.

“Alexa comes from a business and accounts-driven background and is so good at all the sales and accounts side. Geri has a brilliant technical brain, coming from an engineering background.

“Chris and us three girls knew that whatever we were going to do wanted to be something really special and with Chris’ distilling experience he knew what we would need.

“He went out to Germany where he commissioned the making of (sill) Eliza who took around nine months to be handbuilt to a unique configuration with no expense spared. She arrived with us during the first lockdown in 2020.”

Nicola said that Eliza has a capacity of 450 litres.

“She can produce 650 bottles per distillation and can be ready to produce as much or as little as we want.”

Launching when they did, Nicola said that their options were somewhat more limited than they had imagined when they had first come up with the idea.

“Times have been very strange and that meant for us that we had to focus first on trading online. This year has been our first where we have been able to begin trading as we would have thought when we started through retail and wholesale, shops, hotels and restaurants.

“We have good friends that are Michelin star and TV chefs like James Martin. James has helped us and through him we were able to become friends with top chef Paul Ainsworth in Padstow in Cornwall. Paul had had our gins since we started.

“We’ve just got into Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair, in their Supper Club Dining Room. They are our first London establishment.”

Nicola paid tribute to the work of and the quality of local farm shops in Yorkshire that also helped launch Cotton Gin.

“I love the countryside for walking and we also have Ryeland and Greyfaced Dartmoor sheep, we’re part of the rural community and it is great that places like Keelham Farm Shop in Skipton and Town End Farm Shop in Airton have got behind our gins.”

Nicola said Cotton Gin’s signature classic London Dry gin is still the best seller but that the seasons can dictate when others come more to the fore.

“We have a strawberry and pink peppercorn gin, which we make in collaboration with Annabel’s Deliciously British strawberries grown in West Yorkshire.

“That is becoming really busy now that we are in summertime. We also have a gently-spiced gin that comes into its own during winter.

“All of our gins are natural, just like cotton. They are a clear gin with no artificial flavours.

“When we launch a new gin, as we will be doing shortly, the first people who get to know are those who have joined us as loyal customers - and we call them our Cotton Buddies.”

Bell Busk is once again home to a thriving business, but not with the same numbers as two centuries ago. At least not just yet.