Good Morning!

I hope you're all starting to benefit from the festive cheer creeping into every moment of our lives. I'm late as usual, but I'm sure you'll forgive me given the happenings of the past month and a half and what a 45 days it's been!

I touched on the Scottish Gin Awards in my previous blog, we were waiting with bated breath to see if we would be recognised for our hard work over the past 14 months since launch. The evening did not disappoint, as we had a wonderful evening filled with glitz and glamour, meeting up with friends old and new (Special mention to Imogen and Isobel from The Secret Garden Distillery, Jez and Nat from Stornoway Distillers and Graeme from The Strontian Distillery) Oh, and not to mention we won Best New Product of the Year!

This is something we didn't think we would achieve as such a small start-up business. It seems like such a long time ago now, since we cleared my parents' old workshop in our remote West Highland home. I remember standing at the open roller shutter door looking at the empty shell and thinking, 'Where will this crazy adventure take us next?' It turns out quite a long way, and we are so thankful for all the support you have given to help drive us here.

But this is far from the plateau of our story and we have plans in the making…

Let me get back to our adventures of late; shows! Our two biggest events of the year were Living North Christmas and The Ideal Home Show at Olympia London. We spent most of the year preparing for the surge in demand for the festive season and it has not disappointed, both shows were a huge success. But we came away from both feeling exhausted having spoken to thousands of people and spread the word of Igneous far and wide, so for now we are happy to tuck our show stand back into bed and look forward to what 2025 has to offer in our exhibiting calendar.

One thing we can say for sure is thanks to the huge support provided by the team at The Gin To My Tonic, their awards judges, and the general public who voted for us, we have won Newcomer of the Year 2024 at The Gin To My Tonic Awards and have received the bursary prize, meaning we hope to be attending a lot more events with The Gin To My Tonic in 2025! This was also awarded alongside Best Modern Gin and Best Bottle Design so we can't thank everyone enough for their support.

Recently it has become apparent to Katie and I that everyone has warmed to the handmade nature of what we do here at Igneous. We have created a product with precision detailing, but the core of what it is remains truly crafted. Both in our West Highland Dry Gin, in which every drop is distilled personally by myself, to each vessel to contain it handcrafted by Katie.

We added to our product lineup this year by offering our very own hand-made ceramic tumblers; these have been hugely popular. Not mass made, full of character and most importantly Never Ever Ordinary at their core. Having sold out of every batch we have made so far, we love the fact that there are folk enjoying our Gin up and down the country out of our tumblers as well. Today we are glaze firing our very last batch for 2024 which will be online tomorrow evening (Thursday 12th December) at 7 pm.

It feels like 2024 is coming to a natural finish, and considering how crazy it's been, everything is slotting nicely into its advent calendar door ready for us to close each item away until we return in the new year after a very much required rest. With only 14 days until the big day and only 8 working postage days left, we can see twinkling festive lights at the end of the 2024 season. The kiln is on for the final time this year and won't be fired up again until mid-January, which is when we will be back into full bottle production swing and I'll be back at our still producing more of our award-winning West Highland Dry Gin for you all to enjoy in 2025!

Once again, thank you so much for all your support of Igneous throughout 2024 and we really hope we continue to be a favourite in 2025, where we will be bringing more exciting things for everyone. Have a fantastic, fun-filled, and festive break.

If you haven't already, make sure to grab yourself a bottle of Igneous to savour over the holidays.

See you in 2025.

Miles and Katie x