All of this took place in October 2019 when it was too late to actually get into trade to hit the winter spirits and liqueur market.

Tom: The label came about because I read articles about him. During one of the wars, the Belgian refugees came to England and he was at the time based near Nottingham. They shifted them away from London as, as they did. One of the things that he did, which just remained in my mind was to go round, no one had any money or anything, but he used to collect eggs. I managed to get every single person their bottles the last bottle I delivered by hand on Christmas Day morning. So, it went absolutely crazy. I can’t say I enjoyed the two weeks of darkness in the farm in the Cotswolds, because that was hard work at -5, but we got there in the end.

I think things are more serious now. We’ve got some investment in the business. There’s only so long that you could make 5,000 bottles demand, which is great. It’s too big for me to keep it up on my own. I need people to help me and to do that. I now have a responsibility to other people, which I love. We’ve got fun people involved, we’ve got the Duke of Norfolk, Eddy, who has invested in spirits before and who knows what he’s doing. He who brings cleverness and knowledge and fun to the party. That’s the experience that we’re going for. And we’ve got a garden gin version Fortnum and Mason would like me to make something else for them. Tom: I was doing that as well, and I think he was a big fan of Stanley, who doesn’t like Stanley, a legend! I think it amalgamates them together and it creates a kind of nice, a little bit of white foam on the top, which visually appealing. He’s the man, he’s doing it. Yeah. Good. We are constantly trying to improve it. It’s great that it started off as a home made drink, but filtering and fining of something so full of ground spices and raisiny shrub was a real headache . So we spent a great deal of time working out how to use filtration systems and bentonite fining.” Sweet and oh-so-indulgent, liqueurs are the perfect end to any meal. Typically, they will have a lower ABV of around 15-20% (as opposed to a straight spirit such as gin, which will be upwards of 40%), making them ideal drunk neat or over ice.

Tom: Susan. Good question. I lived in Australia for a long time. I absolutely love Sydney. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. New Year’s in Sydney, there’s a place on Bondi Beach called Icebergs, right, which is an amazing restaurant. You can sit there, you can watch the surfers, you can see everything coming in. If you live for Lush Life would you consider supporting us… Just go to patreon.com/lushlife and you can donate once or monthly to make sure we are still here every Tuesday. Tom: Good question because I have no idea about spirits. I’ve never worked in booze. I’ve had various jobs in the past, some incredibly brilliant and amazing and some less so good. This came about because I love having dinner parties. I always like people at the end of a dinner party to stay for an extra couple of hours to make sure, since we’re all together, that we make the most out of hanging out. So much so that he now has a 10% stake in the business and is committed to hand peeling Amalfi oranges and lemons for large parts of the year.Now some nearly 120 years later Tom Lester has decided to give it a second life and created a 2020 version of the winter gin liqueur recipe – that so requires every ingredient to be sourced, peeled and squeezed by hand.