about us
T I M E L I N E
It all began when Peter Golightly, a former corporate IT executive and long-standing gin fan, thought he would try making gin himself. With a copper pot, still and the appropriate licences in hand, he started experimenting with recipes, enjoying his results with friends and family until he hit on the hero ingredients of lemon and ginger. Inspired by the gingerbread-making history of his Lancashire hometown Ormskirk. Peter shared Ormskirk Gin with a friend, a fellow former IT specialist and Wirral Gin creator.
Peter and his friend went into business together, first creating The Wirral Distillery and then small batch runs of Wirral and Ormskirk Gin from our first premise, ‘ The Old Shippon’ in Spital. From here, we ran gin tastings, tours, etc.
As our team grew, we quickly struck luck. We’d started creating flavoured gins, and Bakewell Gin was picked up by LadBible on Facebook! It’s fair to say it was a struggle making, bottling, and labelling all the bottles in the small barn conversion, even with extra hands!
This also isn’t the first hype we created; later in the year, we were the first producer of Shimmer Gins, Violetta Gin – now known as Parma Violet Gin, another of our bestselling products.
We were relieved to eventually move from The Old Shippon. We loved it there, but unfortunately, we had outgrown the building. We opened a little shop in Claremont Courtyard and moved production to our current home, 25 Bassendale Road, Bromborough.
We spent a lot of time working on our brands and gaining bespoke customers like Bulldog Skincare, Primark, Oh Polly, Pretty Little Thing, and many more. We also gained accreditations to be supermarket standards, entering our regional gins into local Morrisons and Co-op Shops.
As COVID-19 hit, the world stood still, and our orders very quickly went through the roof! We had to work in family bubble shifts, wearing more PPE than usual, to make sure our staff were kept safe. We had record sales, so we had to hire more staff to keep up with the demand. We took on the likes of air hostesses, nail techs, and builders—people who unfortunately couldn’t do their day-to-day jobs during these strange times. We closed down the distillery shop at Claremont to concentrate on production.
Sea Ridge Distillery was founded by Jonpaul Stanhope and James White with a vision to create wonderful grain-to-glass products using local botanicals for all to enjoy. They started off making Gin, with Heswall Gin being the jewel of the early creations, along with High Tide, an overproof Gin, and naturally flavoured rhubarb, raspberry, and limoncello Gin.
Sea Ridge moved to Church Farm and set up a destination distillery. It launched Millers Vodka with wheat supplied from Walk Mill in Cheshire. Later in the year, Sea Ridge launched their Rum range, which includes Dark Spiced, Barrel-Aged, and white Rum using traditional Caribbean fermentation.
This was a year of change for us. One of our directors parted ways, and our principal director, Peter, was looking to retire. Another local distillery, Sea Ridge Distillery, owned by Jonpaul Stanhope and James White, was looking to expand. With perfect timing, talks began about merging the two companies together. James later decided to venture back into corporate IT and leave the business. Leaving Jonpaul to be the new Managing Director of The Wirral Distillery, The Handmade Gin Company, and the newly named Sea Ridge Spirt Co. We reopened the distillery shop from 25 Bassendale at the end of 2023 and it remains open now.
Sea Ridge partnered with Chester Zoo to create a Chester Zoo range of Gin, vodka, and rum. – Sea Ridge Distillery becomes Sea Ridge Spirit Co. – Merger of Sea Ridge Spirit Co with the Handmade Gin company under the banner of the Wirral Distillery.
Handmade Gin and Sea Ridge Spirit Co. merge to become The Wirral Distillery.